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Washington, Minnesota officially endorse a “safer, faster” traffic merge

arstechnica.com

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Re: Washington, Minnesota officially endorse a “safer, faster” traffic merge

#101

Post by krzrak »

molf wrote: post #9

I'm surprised this is written like zipper merging is some kind of recently discovered secret. Zipper merging (or weaving) has been standard practice in parts of Europe for 20 years (maybe longer – I can't really remember anything else). Since March 2014 it is even mandatory in Belgium, and anyone merging early may risk a €55 fine [1]. It has been repeatedly advocated and promoted by various governments in Europe [2]…

> I'm surprised this is written like zipper merging is some kind of recently discovered secret.

Yeah, it's funny :) In U.S. they have the same with road circles/roundabout. Some time ago I watched TED talk where the speaker was talking about this like it was some amazing innovation :)

Re: Washington, Minnesota officially endorse a “safer, faster” traffic merge

#102

Post by Brian-Puccio »

Locally (metro NYC), I've heard this referred to as "alternate merge" and it's usually mentioned in the context of someone saying something along the lines of "there was a traffic jam due to an accident and then when it was MY TURN to go, the person in the other lane didn't let me in". Usually there's a comment about how the plates were from out of state, too.

This is not to be confused with, e.g., a road that splits and the left lane split it moving fine and the right lane is backed up and a driver in the left lane waits until the last possible second to move over, often times coming to a complete stop, thus backing up what should be a free-flowing lane. No, in that case you didn't move over in time, you don't get to slow down traffic, you take the lane you're in and keep going, you'll have to take the next exit.

Re: Washington, Minnesota officially endorse a “safer, faster” traffic merge

#103

Post by adwf »

MagicWishMonkey wrote: post #93
ericHosick wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Zipper merging is the optimal solution. People early merge because they think it is the optimal/moral/better/'done my part' solution. If everyone knew about zipper merging there would be no early mergers (and 'late mergers' don't exist within the context of zipper merging).

The problem is most people don't know how to properly zipper merge, so pretending that everything would be hunky dory as long as people play by a set of rules that you know they aren't likely to play by is an exercise in futility.

Don't know why you're being downvoted; I've had too many people deliberately block my merge when I merge late, to ever try it at full speed in the UK :(

Re: Washington, Minnesota officially endorse a “safer, faster” traffic merge

#104

Post by Jach »

Alternatively... Since the government forces me to bring my vehicle to one of their locations every other year for emissions testing, have them install a speed control unit with a beacon to communicate with other cars. (Yes it will be harder to install on some cars than others -- even just the beacon would be valuable.) Over the course of five years, retrofit every vehicle with a beacon and have it already installed on new cars, have severe penalties for vehicles caught driving around not broadcasting their signal, and now everyone can have a bit more automation in their automobiles since the systems will enforce safe merge gaps and other nice things like computer-enforced speed limits. Plus it prepares everyone for a fully automated experience that can come sometime in the 2020s.

I can dream right?

Re: Washington, Minnesota officially endorse a “safer, faster” traffic merge

#105

Post by ics »

dionidium wrote: post #78
ics wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> [...] inconveniencing everyone behind them for the self satisfaction of having helped the one person they can see. Or because you know that otherwise they'll be at that crossing for the next hour if nobody's willing to let them by. Perhaps there are some funny allusions to net neutrality to be made here...

Just because you want to turn left, doesn't mean you have to sit helpless waiting to do so. You're allowed to turn right and locate a safe place to turn around.

I have sympathy for left-turners in particularly busy intersections where there is no turn light. Driving in NYC, you pretty much have to nudge as close to the opposing lane as you can until the light turns yellow/red and you can scoot yourself out of gridlock. Furthermore, you must account for streets which are one way, too narrow, full, or active to stop and turn around. However, this was not the situation I was really talking about at all.

The scenario I had in mind while writing my post is that of the local road which crosses a major stretch of highway. Such highways might be an actual interstate, a busy two-lane highway, etc. One of the worst types of road to cross is the one that is far too wide for its own good– an ambitious 6-lane road with not enough traffic to ever be full (Trenholm Road in SC, ahem), but enough so that drivers spread out across all lanes and make crossing very annoying sometimes. There are parts of the Taconic (NY) that pretty bad to cross, though I'm usually the one on the highway. The local cross sometimes gets backed up 5-10 cars, 2-3 of which are stuck in the median. Getting on the highway or going around by going the next town can add 10+ miles. Letting someone cross by slowing down a bit and changing lanes is not, in my opinion, a smug assault on the efficiency of those driving on the highway... it's just something a few people do when they recognize that nothing is very efficient anyway. (Note that I haven't said much about safety because it was only a small part of their comment, and not the part I was responding to. I hope it's clear that I am not advocating for people to test fate by slamming their brakes to let someone curtsy across the pavement.)

Re: Washington, Minnesota officially endorse a “safer, faster” traffic merge

#106

Post by bignaj »

curtis wrote: post #22

Late merging works fine in Seattle, and in my experience the lane that's closed moves substantially faster than the open lane because Seattle drivers will actually let you merge in. That's not how I recalled it working when I lived in Texas though. In Texas if you got caught in the closed lane you were pretty much stuck there for a while, while the guys in the open lane whizzed by too fast for anybody in the slower (…

Seattle drivers are some of the worst mergers on the planet. You'll see a half-mile-long line of early mergers and then an entire unused lane. Absolutely blows my mind.

Re: Washington, Minnesota officially endorse a “safer, faster” traffic merge

#107

Post by mark-r »

The nicest thing about zipper merging is that everyone can see the fairness of it, when it works. It's the lack of fairness that most infuriates people with the free-for-all system.

Minnesota still does a very poor job of letting people know where the expected merge point is.

Re: Washington, Minnesota officially endorse a “safer, faster” traffic merge

#108

Post by malandrew »

nardi wrote: post #72
malandrew wrote: post #35

That video explanation made no sense to me. Basically the "interface" presented to the drivers has not changed, so why would drivers deviate from how they currently merge? Because the government said so? I don't see this working. However there are two solutions that could promote zipper merging: (1) Force both lanes to the center before moving that center lane to the side that is available ahead: ____________________…

Option 1 leads to "no, after you " behavior, steers two cars directly at each other, and probably would be a disaster.

I reckon you could do the following to fix this issue:

(1) add the barrier from option 2 to option 1, so that all the merging happens at the front.

(2) Keep the "make both parties move structure" from option 1, but don't make it 100% symmetrical. Instead, nudge the top lane down just enough so they are forced to slow down and somewhat zipper in with the bottom lane.

Re: Washington, Minnesota officially endorse a “safer, faster” traffic merge

#109

Post by vinbreau »

notacoward wrote: post #27

Zipper merging works great as long as everyone on both sides is willing to alternate (or if strong enforcement requires them to do so). Otherwise, letting "late mergers" scream past fifty "early mergers" often creates a situation worse than simple early merge. There's plenty of blame to go around. * The vast majority of the people blasting down the late-merge lane clearly have no interest in alternating or merging in…

We have this problem in Texas but there is an additional problem; If you are not an early merger people tend to not let you in anywhere in the chain forcing you to become a late merger. I tend to grab a spot early because too often people would not allow me to merge at any point. Texas drivers are very aggressive, I imagine this scenario is true in other places as well.

Re: Washington, Minnesota officially endorse a “safer, faster” traffic merge

#110

Post by tedsanders »

dusing wrote: post #11
ChikkaChiChi wrote: post #4

In practice zipper merging works amazingly well. MNDOT has used signage to tell drivers to maintain speed and stay in their lanes for the past few years of construction in the northern Twin Cities. You wouldn't believe how much faster traffic moves when these simple reminders are posted. The problem is that without the signs (and enforcement) drivers in the Twin Cities Metro regularly shoot to seal any gap that may a…

I live in the Twin Cities and "Minnesota nice" means merging incredibly early when a lane is posted as closed. As a transplant I can always count on getting and extra 1/2 - 1 mile ahead by staying in the closed lane. It is getting better, but still 40% of the time the car at the end of the zipper merge is NOT happy to see you, and thinks they are letting you in. Signage is helping at the big construction areas.

The whole point of zipper merging is to minimize speed differences between lanes for maximum efficiency and maximum safety.

The proper way to execute a late zipper merge is to match speeds and merge at the end.

You are not correctly zipper merging if you are passing other cars before merging at the end.

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