An engineer created this traffic light-free intersection monstrosity. Because, you know, cars and car infrastructure don't already take up massive amounts of space as is.
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@destructdisc LOL, this is like a very fucked up roundabout. It takes way more space and is way more dangerous.
dude bro, we need to drive at 90 MILES PER HOUR AT ALL TIMES!
As if normal roundabouts didn't already take up enough space.
That’s why the UK has magic roundabouts, like Swindon’s
Are accidents being counted per day or per hour over there?
This site mentions 14 major and ~100 minor accidents over the past 25 years, so I'd assume they count them per year.
It’s almost like making the road harder to navigate make drivers slow down similar to crimping the road.
A very elaborate roundabout for sure
A very roundabout way of building one.
Yes
Bloody hell. So much merging and switching of lanes. There would broken bits of car everywhere. The only upside would be the ability of bikes to go past the gridlock that would happen at a certain density of traffic. Also, why do so many people in the animation need to U-turn?
They need a U turn because they missed their exit at the previous insanely designed interchange
Came to say the same thing. So many lane changes needed in a short distance. People suck at merging at the best of times. This is a panel beater's wet dream. That 'engineer' needs to go back to school.
This is why engineers need to go outside and experience the real world like the rest of us.
I've spent a fair proportion of my life around civil, structural, mechanical and process engineers, and found them to be some of the most pragmatic, sensible, intelligent and practical people you'll even meet. The shit they design needs to work, or people die. Whoever designed this is not one of those people.
I've spent a fair portion of my professional career working for engineers of various types. The issue lies with the people who assume their intense knowledge of their chosen field of study means that they are experts in all fields of human existence. This pomposity leads to the stereotypical engineer who gets trapped into CAD models that don't translate to the real world and get belligerent when that gets pointed out. Certainly I've met engineers who aren't like that, but the stereotype exists for a reason. Perhaps it's Electrical engineers that are the worst? I meet a lot of them.
Retired school teachers are another problematic customer who knows more than any seasoned journeyman.
I've always heard that in civil engineering the ones who design parking lots are the worst of them, based on the results we see in the world. Maybe this was from one of them accidentally handed something outside their normal work.
That’s how you go left. Basically the same as a Michigan left.
Two wrongs don't make a right, but three rights make a left.
That’s a jug handle, not a Michigan left.
Source: I live in Michigan. Michigan lefts are awesome.
Because they're on a stroad and the business they want to visit is on the other side
The people uturning are just trying to go straight lol. They have to turn right, merge left, u turn, merge right, and turn right, in order to go straight. Others are trying to turn left which here involves a u turn, merge right, turn right.
This design is an abomination really, there'd be so many accidents around the merging, where the traffic streams effectively have to swap over.
The only defence of this is that it would take LESS space than some kind of cloverleaf system. I think this whole design is trying to be space efficient whilst attemptign to keep traffic flowing (which it wouldn't do).
Making it so most of the traffic is in a merging state is a really bad idea. So many accidents happen because of people changing lanes, and here a large part of the traffic needs to do that, plus has little space and time to do it in. I'd love to see this made in something like City Skylines, just to show how bad it gets (without the car accidents, though, unless newest versions also simulate that).
Only if you make a right turn you dont have to merge, but then there is still a lane merging into yours. So a (very) large part of the traffic has to change lanes, but everybody is merging. If you want to drive straight, you have to merge twice. Total madness.
This only works if drivers take the u-turns at full speed. The first driver slows down to 10 km/h for the u-turn, and the whole thing gets backed up to the point merging is impossible, and it becomes worse than a 4-way light.
This is just a flattened highway interchange.
Also, holy shit so many combination enter/exit lanes, so many potential points of high-velocity conflict!
Exacrly my thought, those already exist and work wonderfully, why try to make them flat and 100 times more dangerous in the process?
Around my area we have combination highway on ramps and exits where the lane for getting on immediately becomes the next exit. They are incredibly stressful and dangerous given just a tiny bit of traffic, everybody is frantically trying to merge on and off a short strip and accidents happen all the time. This intersection turns the entire road into that design lmao, they're off their ass if they really think this design is any good
I know right, it's basically just a roundabout with added dangers.
Yeah that was my first thought too. They have those where I live, they're usually like a quarter mile long but all of the action usually goes down in the first 100 feet or so, mega conflict zone.
What do these folks have against roundabouts?
This is a roundabout. It's just three roundabouts that only connect two roads each.
This is just a roundabout with a way for drivers to bail out and turn around before entering the roundabout
It's also a roundabout with two 90 degree turns and a 180.
That's just a big roundabout
Because fuck pedestrians, right?
So a roundabout for Americans?
This looks like something RealCivilEngineer would do for a bit, lol. I think I see a bit of the strongest shape in there.
Already exists in better.
Thoughtful of them to provide extra U turns so that people approaching this monstrosity can nope the fuck out.
I assume the 'engineer' has never seen a road or drove a car, because even if we assume more infrastructure will solve induced demand, and even if everyone's going at a nice 30mph, this intersection is gonna go at like 3 accidents/minute.
Those 180° turns look way too tight for semi-trailer trucks. Even the vans are drifting there.
And all those single lanes, merging, and tight turns are a recipe for congestion.
A proper roundabout would work much better, waste less concrete, and probably take up less space.
This would gridlock so fast. Actually I think it would gridlock so incredibly hard that cars would end up abandoned after they ran out of gas from how long they were stuck.
This is not traffic free. This does not account for the vast majority of people who don't know how to drive or merge on a highway. This would fail every real world trial. It can be said there is some beauty in its arrogance though.
Edit: this is clearly (hopefully) satire given those U turns of death in the middle of a highway interchange that cannot be used by the one thing that needs it the most for this to be commercially viable: semi trucks.
Edit 2: I just noticed this isn't an interstate highway intersection but just your regular ol state road intersection. I ate the onion... I hope it was satire at least.
It says traffic light-free.
This looks like hell...
It's only one lane of traffic either way and you've got to merge in and out of two separate traffic flows in a short distance just to go 'straight' through to the other side.
looks to be firmly 'in theory'
It almost exists as the Michigan left
It’s wonderful yes but relies on people leaving space to allow zippering.
Unfortunately everyone is a bastard and goes bumper to bumper.
Seen from a traffic planning perspective, these lane changes alone would cause more incidents than 10% of drivers running a red light crossing.
Not even 10am yet and enough of car brain for the day 🤦♂️.
And yes I get it, some countries consider roundabouts (the ones used almost everywhere in the world) some black magic.
Well this is a very roundabout way of getting places
I used to commute an hour to work every day, each way, and the worst part was cross-merging traffic, exactly like there are 4 of in this design.
This was obviously designed with the assumption that people know how to drive without getting in one another's way.
Uh-huh.
Median U-Turn (MUT) Intersection?
…and yes they are as confusing as they look.
I'm 90% sure this is just Detroit.
summarizes american infrastructure: needlessly massive, dangerous, and helps absolutely fucking no one.
I could see this as a replacement for a highway interchange/cloverleaf. Are we sure it's not intended for that?
As a replacement for a 4-way stoplight intersection, yeah this is nuts.
If this were a highway, you'd have to cut the speed limit in half as people try to merge and possibly shift lanes after making a u-turn and only have a very short distance to get back up to speed. This kind of design looks like it'd only work at very low speeds or density, at which point you might as well just use a roundabout.
Edit: also it looks like you need about 6 lanes of space (2 in either direction and 4 for turning around, including an extra wide radius so you can go faster then 10 mph) all to effectively support 2 actual lanes of traffic.
Throughput would be ass. Clover is good because you keep all lane changes on the rightmost lane while keep the two straight-on at full speed, diagram only has one direction full speed.
A turbo roundabout is what a sane person would use in this situation. Does the same thing with a lot less space.
if only our world is not 2d, then we could have overpasses and tunnels...
The gif is kinda soothing to watch if you don't know the context behind it. Then I read the post title and now the gif is nauseating to look at.
Why not just elevate one of the roads and have an exit/entrance for anyone who wants to switch? Having to turn right, merge, fucking u-turn, then immediately merge again just to GO STRAIGHT is the stupidest fucking thing.