More accurately…you’re the gray car wanting to turn right, but there is about 1/2-1/3 full car length in-between the black-green-white cars blocking the lane.
Just one more lane bro! That’ll get rid of the traffic bro!
Read a book a few months ago by Tom Vanderbilt called traffic that was an academic look at the titular traffic and it showed negative returns on adding lanes.
Can you summarize the gist of it? I keep seeing this claim and it is extremely non-intuitive.
Supposing it’s true, how is it we’ve magically arrived at the optimal number of lanes as of the uttering of the statement?
If it’s a basically linear function where the lowest traffic is near-zero lanes, is there an implication that mass transit would be built in tandem with lane reduction, or does everyone just get more miserable?
Edit: I’ll add that what I’ve heard is that more people choose to drive until the misery-equilibrium is reached. So roads will always be as busy as they are now because they are at their max tolerable level of drivability. That seems plausible for some roads and for some finite number of lanes, but not generally applicable.
Essentially you need all streets to be serviceable by trucks, ambulances, etc., and therefore the general minimum is 1 lane. As you add car infrastructure, it becomes relatively more convenient to drive to a destination than take other modes of transport. You are also typically investing in the car infrastructure at the expense of alternatives, a straight opportunity cost and a sort of spiralling trap, as development becomes more and more centred around the car.
Braess’s paradox outlines adding a route can actually worsen overall network flow, and more broadly, new capacity just attracts new drivers until congestion returns to roughly where it started. Suboptimalities like the accordion effect are compounded as more traffic is added to the system.
Induced demand doesn’t imply the current number of lanes is optimal, just that expansion tends to be self-defeating.
Lane reduction alone would just increase misery, so the answer is redirect road space into transit, which absorbs displaced drivers at higher capacity. Otherwise it’s just misery.
I have a civil engineering degree with a focus on transport but never really used it for that, so this is something that I was taught, but had over a decade to devolve more into opinion.
Lane reduction alone would just increase misery…
Agreed, mostly. In my neighborhood (Grid system) they updated the 4-lane roads in the area to 2-lane roads with center turn lanes. It’s made traffic much better, simply because there’s no traffic waves created by people lane changing around people turning left.
This feels like an analogy for bike lanes.
Here in 'Merika, it would only take two cars to block the turning lane, because half of these morons are oblivious and/or on their goddam phones.
I thought you were going to say because the cars are the size of tanks.
That too. Lots of Canyoneros out there.
Two cars or one stupidly oversized truck.
Can you help me understand the image? The turning lane here is foiled by more than two-ish cars, but that’s still better than the one car it would take to block the right turners otherwise.
In the image, the 4 cars on the left are blocking the fifth car who wants to turn right even though there’s a green arrow. I’ve experienced this lots of times, but on left turns, and a lot of times because too many assholes in front of me aren’t pulled up as far as they can.
I mean, you also don’t want to pull ahead as close as possible. What if the vehicles infront of you need to back up, or an ambulance needs through. You don’t wanna be packed like sardines at an intersection.
Sure the person who posted this has no idea how to drive.
But that car would be able to leave before a green light.
I once got stuck in a bus like this. I was 20 minutes early for my connection. I missed my connection.
Should have gotten on the right bus.
Man that’s good.
Mate I once missed a connection after it was delayed by 30min taking into account I was supposed tobe there 4h early…
This reads like a Mitch Hedberg joke.
One time, I was late for the bus. The schedule said I was also 20 minutes early for the bus. It seems to me there is an obvious disagreement in the late-slash-early status of the bus. This cannot be good for traffic. Someone should do something about this.
Once? Things like this happen to me all the time when there’s a lot of traffic. Sometimes you can’t get there til all the people who don’t need to get there get there.
As an aside, are there real L-shaped traffic light stacks? I’ve always seen them with the arrow at the bottom. The direction of the arrow makes it perfectly understandable without putting it off to the side. But I could imagine a traffic light company marketing these.
Idk, my city in UK has those, though it’s usually backwards L for left turn.
I’ve noticed a lot of little routine things in UK are different from US where I live. I really wish we had more roundabouts here.
People in the us where they have roundabouts don’t know how to use them. Roundabouts are great unless the people are too dumb to use them.
I live on a street that’s got two roundabouts. It’s a residential area and people really don’t know how to use them. If you don’t signal, nobody knows what you’re doing. Please signal. I’m begging you. It’s not that hard.
Strong UP ARROW on this one!
I like them.
My wife gets to anxious about them. Like nobody is in the circle and she comes to almost a full stop, and cars behind honk. i explained to think of it as a 4 way yield sign.
To which she said “What’s a yeild sign?”
Ah, so that’s the issue 😀
Depends on the country. I’ve only seen these.
It’s informative in that you can guess what the extra light is even when off.
I guess, but in my experience there’s red, yellow, green, and any extra bottom one is an arrow.
With us, it can be an arrow right, an arrow forward, a light saying bus, a bunch of things
This would be much less of a problem if fewer people insisted on bringing their whole living room everywhere they go.
Americans have to have large cars because they are always 2 paychecks away from living in them
Where exactly are those cars heading? There’s no road forward and only one lane to the right.
Turning left.
And not signaling. That tracks.
The comic definitely made it more confusing by choosing the main (non-intersecting) road of a T junction to illustrate this. In most countries, if this road splits into two lanes, the left-turning lane would split off, and the right-turning lane would go straight.
Edit: Apparently, this style of junction is more common in the US. In Europe, I’ve only seen this kind of junction on highways, but that would be without traffic lights and with a much longer turning lane.
Going out on a limb to say it might have to do with the left-hand versus right-hand traffic differences?
I mean, it’s just a comic, not a rendering drawn by a traffic engineer. There’s plenty about it that isn’t quite right, but it gets the point across so there’s no need to nitpick it. (Source: I’m a traffic engineer, among other things.)
Inaccurate. It’s two cars with 1.5 car lengths in front of each.
You’re right, this is worse.
So close. The first car is too close to the line.
I drive to patients homes all day and I daily see people in the suburbs stop far enough back that they don’t always trip the left turn arrow, sometimes leaving that lane stuck an extra cycle. It would be infuriating, except that my drive time is paid and mileage reimbursed, so I’ve chosen not to let it bother me. I just roll my eyes and wait.
Generally when approaching a intersection on a red light you should stop the car so that you see the white line at the top of your hood. This allows you to also see the painted crosswalk and any pedestrians in the crosswalk (no matter their height) when sitting in your car.
If it’s a two lane or more roadway it also has the added benefit of letting the driver to your right see pedestrians more clearly if they are making a right turn.
The person in the car furthest right can now pull up and have their wheels touch the white line (if turning right) and not have to block a crosswalk, while having a full unobstructed view of the intersection to the left, it also allows a pedestrian crossing to see the car in the far right line as they approach the end of the intersection.
At least here in Austria we often have left turning lanes, that have a magnetic sensor/loop in the street and the traffic light only switches, when you’re on top off it.
People stopping way too early and especially people leaving too much space between cars is really infuriating in the city…Those sensors are the apex of Modernist arrogance, where people just decide they know every detail about any system they look at and can control everything.
There is no single place where they work. But at least people have been steadily removing them for the last 30 years.
I’ve noticed more and more what look like cameras/infrared sensors on traffic lights instead of induction loops, much more “fault tolerant” and work much better for cyclists.
I’m not really sure, if I understood you
In streets with high traffic, the left turning red light only goes to green, if someone is actually there waiting. Because else it would make a longer red phase for the opposite drivers going straight
So, it seems like an improvement to me
What am I missing?
What am I missing?
Every traffic situation where people would need to cross but there won’t be a car stopper exactly over the sensor.
Not exhaustively:
-
pedestrians
-
motorcycles
-
bicycles
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cars stopped at the wrong place
-
I’m not talking about hanging back 5 or even 10 feet from the intersection, but sometimes 15-20. I often see people sitting back this far on their phone, so I can only guess that they feel it gives them a buffer to not pay attention to their surroundings. A few years ago I was stuck in a left turn lane with a large number of cars behind someone sitting too far back to trip the light (a T intersection where the left turn was always red unless triggered.) By the third light cycle the person in the car behind them got out, knocked on the window and had to show them where to pull up to. It’s a big fat white line. It shouldn’t be that complicated.
I travel through the South and West Chicago suburbs, where generally intersections are designed with a gap between the white line and the crosswalk to allow visibility.
This is fucking dumb.
Yes. Sometimes you have turn lanes you can’t get to because traffic or an obstruction + traffic. Does that mean we should t have turn lanes? You fucking troglodytes. Blindly complaining about reasonable situations makes you look like a moron.
I bet the people who upvoted are the same Dipshits that stop a car length away from the fucking line at a stop light and then creep up like that is a reasonable decision. Drive up to the line STOP and wait till green. Don’t creep up. Don’t pad your fucking stop. Pull all the god damn way up and stop.
Huh, I took this as “hey doesn’t it suck when this happens?” Nothing about this implies that the lane shouldn’t exist at all.
What in the heck are you rambling about brother? Who’s complaining?
Been a while since I’ve encountered online road rage
This is dumb.
Where I live, people blast through the open left turn lane and turn right across 2 lanes of stopped traffic waiting at the red light.
Truly enlightened. But only if you’re cousin is a cop and can get you out of the ticket.
In my experience the turn lane doesn’t have a hard cutoff like that, you can usually ride the shoulder a bit to get around people if needed
Where I live the only place you’ll find a shoulder is on the Autobahn and there are no traffic lights on the Autobahn.
So your one of those drivers, huh?
And some people make it a sport here! Zooming by on the shoulder. For…waaay too long.
Dodging pedestrians?
Am I the only one deeply irritated that the left going lane has no arrows and no one is indicating left either?
This intersection really hurts my sense of order!Here, I fixed it. The person in the back row has their right blinker on so they can get into the left-turn only lane.
My headcanon is that the right turning person’s blinker is the only one out of sync
Thanks, that idea has a certain beauty to it.
I will now adopt it and move closer to inner peace again!
They’re all BMWs…
Some people don’t indicate when the lane they’re in can be used only to go one way. It’s not necessarily the best course of action, but you just sorta learn to deal with it
has no arrows
How do you know? They’d all be obscured by the cars.
Should be visible on the first panel, unless painted totally randomly out of sync to the right-pointing arrows.
But that would also trigger my sense of order, soooo… :-)
Maybe the arrows are covered by the cars.
Maybe the arrows are covered by the cars.
Not in the first panel.
If there were arrows, they should be visible in parallel to the arrows going to the right.
It’s a left-only lane, why would you have a blinker on?
Because you’re a good driver who signals instinctually when turning rather than using your attention to look for excuses not to tell people what you’re planning to do?
Because your indicator signals unambiguous intent to any observer who does not possess the same universal mental database of every intersection in the world that you must possess.
Why would it be a left-only lane?
There are no arrows on the lane…And even if it was, you still have to indicate your desired direction, as the direction of the lane might not be clear to all traffic participants.
Because going forward would lead you into the railing and grass. You can literally only make a left or illegal right.
You’re the reason we have to add “coffee is hot” warnings on take away cups, mate.
You can literally only make a left or illegal right.
Why would turning right be illegal?
As far as we can see, it is a lane with no mandatory direction (which is the thing that has been bugging me in the first place).But, TBF, I believed that myself for a long time, only to have the called police give me a little crash course in traffic lane rules after I had a car crash in a somewhat similar situation…
I don’t think you have to indicate left when it’s the only possible direction you can go
You do, because the other drivers cannot be expected to track whether that’s your only possibility.
I don’t think you have to indicate left when it’s the only possible direction you can go
But with no arrows on the ground, you could also go to the right.
Had to learn that the hard way some years ago, when a car standing on a arrow-less lane, unexpected by me, also turned left together with myself standing on the left-arrow-lane.
We then had a crash while merging lanes, and it was determined to be my fault entirely.So the comic also triggers a bit of PTSD for me… ;-)
Sounds like a fucked up intersection if two lanes merge into one during the turn. Usually they will be two lanes with a solid white to indicated not to switch lanes.
This is precisely why you always indicate. In the absolute worst case scenario, it’s redundant information. But it also indicates unambiguous intent even when the traffic pattern is confusing or unfamiliar.
You also need to indicate even when you think you are alone. Again, worst case scenario, nobody sees it. But on the off chance that your awareness is not perfect, it indicates unambiguous intent to anyone - including pedestrians - you might have not noticed.
Yes, it is a fucked up intersection, although the two lanes don’t merge into one.
But what you don’t realize there (because of coming out of a slight ditch) is that the target road on the left you are going to, actually has two parallel lanes.
Didn’t expect that at all, and the hinted broken lines on the ground are practically useless, as they have to connect 8 arriving lanes to all their possible counterparts in a chaotic way on a curved surface.
So I just headed to the right side of the left road (not realizing I thereby did a implicit change of lanes), while the car to my right was totally unexpectedly overtaking me from behind, starting from the unmarked lane I didn’t suspect to also optionally lead to the left…
Really fucked up situation for anyone not being local and accustomed to it.
Canada, in a single image? I’ve driven cars in most European countries, Canada, US (small amount), Mexico.
Canada has the worst road designs of them all, though since almost everything here is modelled after the US, I guess it could still be worse there
I regularly see road situations where I can only wonder how high they were, what they were smoking, and where I can get some
Intersections where only one lane has traffic lights, the other doesn’t. How are you supposed to cross that? Simple: you throw a hail Mary, close your eyes, andale a run for it while praying to some non-exist God. This is howy stepson got sideswiped, by a guy having to do exactly that.
Making a left turn in Canada? Great, you got green! Go? Well no, cars are still coming from the other side, they inexplicably got green too so now the intersection with traffic lights also acts as an intersection without traffic lights. Amazing designs!
But wait, there is more!
Once those cars from the other side are gone, you might be tempted to think that you can now just drive, but noooooooh, this is Canada! Pedestrians also got green so now you need to try and avoid those too if you can. The amount of near misses that I’ve had and that I’ve seen with others is staggering, crossing roads in Canada is fucking dangerous.
All this adds up to that going left basically means that you get green light and you can’t do shit until it gets orange, then you quickly squeeze yourself through and pray that you didn’t murder a school class by accident.
This, in turn, means that going to the left is an exercise in patience, because each green red cycle, about one car will be able to go to the left. If each cycle takes a minute, and you have ten cars in front of you, that means you’ll have to wait ten minutes I shit you not.
Compare that to the Netherlands, where intersections get redesigned and rebuilt every time when anyone sees there are tooany accidents, and there are soany amazing traffic flow control designs there. Here in canada, traffic flow designs is “road, done”
I love Canada, I feel proudly Canadian, but Canadian road designs are removed as fuck.
Making a left turn in Canada? Great, you got green! Go? Well no, cars are still coming from the other side, they inexplicably got green too so now the intersection with traffic lights also acts as an intersection without traffic lights. Amazing designs!
Sounds normal to me and I’m in Europe. Unless it’s explicitly signaled with an arrow in the traffic light expect oncoming traffic and of course there are pedestrians.
Oh, it’s worse in the US, but it also varies wildly by State. Boston roads are defined by the most negative possible combination of local knowledge, horse buggy trails, and fuck you. New York? Turn lanes can fuck right off, let’s make sure one car can block an entire lane of cars trying to pass by. Also, let’s cram as many secondary roads into one short highway as possible that is the only way to go a certain direction so that it’s at a near standstill for 15 hours a day. Make sure it’s under construction for every 9 out of 10 years. Oh, and that’ll be $8 toll for the luxury of the experience. Texas? Make each direction on a highway 6 lanes wide with everything from scrapyard clunkers and 10 foot tall brodozers going 80 mph, and they‘ll shoot you if you say anything. Midwest? Hope you have good suspension to cope with all the potholes and missing chunks of bridges. California? 14 lanes wide and at a dead stop in traffic.
The thing that you have to keep in mind is that Canadian roads (and, presumably, American roads, too) were designed for a very different transportation culture than the one that exists today. In many cases, they were built for horses and carriages, and retrofitted to motor vehicles that grew up in a much less populated country. No, they didn’t work well in the 50s, either, but the density of cars was low enough, and the kinds of people who drove were different enough, that it kinda sorta worked. But as the populations have grown, and as the culture has become more high strung, and driving has become a necessity for many people (and as vehicles have gotten larger, taller, and more fortress-like), navigating the streets has gotten riskier for all involved.
And no, it won’t get fixed, because North Americans hate change, and we would rather give a small number of millionaires and billionaires tax cuts than actually spend money on social infrastructure in any kind of meaningful or thought out way.
When you do the math on how much it costs both a private citizen along with the public to enable cars as transportation it’s mind boggling.
The province I live in makes around $90-100B / year in tax revenue, and spends around $4.5-5.5B / year on roads and road maintenance.
There’s also the hidden cost of road work caused by utilities being replaced, struck, or newly installed. We pay thx bill for that through our telecom, power, sewer .etc
Insurance, gas, car payments…
If a road is built to last 10 years then technically on average you’re replacing ⅒ of your roads every year. Utilities are the same and trenching/patching is horrible for roads necessitating rework on them earlier than the life expectancy. A fiber line might have a 40 year life span, but installing it turned a 20 year road into a 10 year replacement.
That lawn on the right won’t plow itself, amirite?
Man, I could have saved like ten, or even fifteen seconds if the infrastructure was bigger.
Fantastic! You have a source?
Just look around.
I’m missing something? I was hoping for a link to the artist’s site
I think it was a joke: reality. The source is reality (around us).
Thanks Ants. Thants.
