There are none around me but my brother lives near one that I’ve driven through a couple of times. It’s not nearly as confusing as I expected it to be. I’m not absolutely convinced that it’s safer and more efficient than the old interchange, but it seems to work reasonably well.
There is a map of all such interchanges that have been built, that are under construction, or have been proposed, as of about a year ago here.
There’s one in Columbus that they built a while ago. I’m not a huge fan, to me it seems like a solution in search of a problem, but it wasn’t an intersection I was all that familiar with before the change. The timing of the lights almost always guarantees that I’m going to hit both of them, which makes me annoyed, and then I’m always hyper-alert because my brain is screaming “You’re going the wrong way!!!” even though I’m following the arrows. That said, it seems to work out fine, everyone gets to where they’re going.
All I can say is that, when the interchange near me was proposed, and described in the newspaper, I couldn’t wrap my head around how it was supposed to work, either. But, now that it’s there, and I’ve driven through it a number of times, I can report that (a) it does work pretty smoothly, and (b) it’s really not confusing. There’s never a situation in it in which you’re in motion, and facing off against oncoming traffic which is also in motion; the stoplight timing is pretty cunning, and it prevents it from happening.
There’s one at I-35 and 95th Street in Overland Park. I like it. It seems to work well. However, I moved here after construction had started, so I don’t know how the traffic was before it was built (although I would guess it was pretty bad).
This is the one that I was going to mention. What a godsend it has been. That interchange and the traffic around it was horrible. It was a lengthy construction project, but it is so much better now.
At first, it can be a little confusing, but just follow the signs and it gets you to where you need to go. The thing that has taken me the longest to get used to is if you are exiting 88 from the West and head North, there are 3-4 lanes. I need to turn right very soon after exiting and have to cross all of those lanes right away. The lights make sure no other traffic is coming, but it is so engrained into my system that you shouldn’t cut across multiple lanes like that.
Funny to see that you are from WI and live in a similar area. Despite my username, I’m not. Just a long time Packer fan (and shareholder).
no, I haven’t encountered one (that I can recall, at least) in metro Detroit. we do have a few SPUIs, though, which the “diverging diamond” seems to be an evolution from.
AFAIK, there are none in the Greater Toronto Area. They were talking about one at, I think, Rathburn and the 427, but the plan was rejected.
I have never heard of this type of interchange but based on the video provided it looks brilliant. I infinitely prefer “traffic calming” to “traffic stopping” interchanges and have a real love of roundabouts, assuming they’re built right–we have a bunch of old ones on residential streets in Portland that are a real challenge to navigate with anything over the size of a van with an eight foot bed, especially when there are cars parked along both sides of every street. The new ones, though, awesome.
They’re planning on building one right near me; it’ll be the first one anywhere near the NY metro area. It took me several tries to get my head around it, when looking at the diagrams in the paper, but it did slowly start to make sense. It can’t be any worse than the current intersection (NY 17/32 right by the Woodbury Commons outlet mall), which turns into gridlock at prime shopping times. There are some severe space limitations that make other options like a traditional cloverleaf near impossible. The diverging diamond seems to fit the space perfectly and I’ve been convinced it’s the best option (well, short of building an exit directly from the NYS Thruway to the outlets, which won’t happen).
I am NOT looking forward to when the construction gets fully going, however.
My problem with these is that people don’t know what “yield” means. For example, I-96 and Beck has one of these. Both SB and NB traffic can enter EB I-96, but the NB’ers have to yield to the SB’ers. The problem is, they don’t (often), and it’s frustrating to not be able to predict whether someone is an asshole or not.
What I like about this is that it separates the people wanting to head North into the right lane, and the people wanting to head south in the left lane. (Or whatever). With the cloverleaf, all the people who want to go EITHER north or south are trying to jam into the right lane, and no one wants to wait their turn. Cloverleafs just bring out the asshole in people.
Reviving this thread because, during a road trip down to Florida, I ran across one of these right off of I-95 (in South Carolina, I think). My wife could not understand why I got so excited about it. OK, maybe it’s not exactly natural to get excited about an intersection. But I digress.
Having now actually used one, I don’t see how it’s confusing at all. You’re not really looking at opposing traffic, so there shouldn’t be much of a mental disconnect. You’re just following the lane markings the way you would if you were in a construction zone with shifting lanes. And it definitely made merging on and off the freeway pretty easy.
I love it, and I hope we start seeing more of it.
I recall one in southern SC, not far from GA. Probably the same one you encountered There was either a gas station, or (more likely) a McD’s on the roughly southeast quadrant of the interchange that I went to from I-95 South. As you’ve observed, it’s not confusing when you’re in it and it would be very difficult to accidentally end up heading down the wrong lane.
They’re planning one on an interstate interchange about 10 miles from me, but that’s years away.
My first encounter with one in the wild was in St. George, Utah, back in 2015 (I-15 exit 8). Not having expected it, *afterwards *it was like, huh, well now, there’s a clever trick.
True, this is one of those situations in which drivers just have to pay attention to and *trust *the signage/signals, and not try to “use the Force” to find their way.
There’s a couple of them near Park City, UT. They are a little bit confusing the first time you use them, but you get used to them in a hurry. If you don’t know what they are, and come upon one, I can see that it’s a bit hard to figure out exactly which lane you are supposed to enter.
It’s amazing how many variations there can be on interchanges.
Here are 30 different 4 way junction possibilities in a groovy youtube video, including the double diamond. I found it mesmerizing.
I’ve never encountered one IRL, but I saw a pic of one several years ago, and was impressed with the idea. Forgot all about it until now. I still think it makes great sense.
I, too, use this intersection regularly. My main complaint is that it is not intuitive at all. You’re essentially traveling “left of center” to continue on a straight path. At night it can be very disconcerting to see oncoming headlights on your right.
I-15 south of Salt Lake City has these- at least ten or so. I used one of them damn near every day. It works fairly well unless you’re coming from the surface street and want to do a u-turn, in which case you’ll have to continue on to the next light to do so. This situation doesn’t come up very often for me, though.
They’re putting one in not to far from me, so I’m curious how it’ll go over. Then again, I live in Brown County, Wisconsin and we have one of the highest concentrations of high capacity roundabouts in the world. Seriously. They’re freaking obsessed with them here.