I live in NJ and there is a section of road near my town that seems to have 2 different speed limits for drivers going in the opposite directions. Approaching the town the limit is 45 which then drops to 35 at a sign and finally to 25 at a sign in town. Leaving town back the way I just described the limit is 25 and the next sign you see is for 45. This sign is across the street from the 35 mph sign for traffic going to town. The result is a stretch of about 500-1000 yds of road where the limit approaching is 35 and the limit leaving is 25.
Is this legal? Does this make any sense? If I got a ticket for doing 35 heading out of town in this stretch would I have a good argument for the judge? Anybody else seen this before?
Makes sense to me – rather than forcing people to slow from 45 to 25, the 35 zone makes them slow more gradually. Conversely, the slower speeds on the way out keep people from goosing it up to 45 as soon as they hit the town limits or whatever.
As for legality, I can’t imagine that it’s illegal to have different speeds in different directions for those very reasons.
It sounds unusual to me; the reason being that a person who does a U turn (assuming that these are possible/permitted on the road in question) may have a false impression of the limit.
This must be common. It might be perfectly reasonable to impose a slower limit on drivers approaching a hazard (a school, a junction, whatever) than on those who have already passed it.
There is a part of the taconic state parkway when it goes around the mountain where the speed limit southbound is (IIRC) 35mph and 45 or 50 MPG northbound. It is a divided hiway though (well it is one road with a thin metal divider in the middle) whihc I think is really treated as 2 one way roads.
But in this case the traffic approaching the hazard (the town) is allowed to go faster than the people already past it. I will take handy’s advice and ask our local road dept.
There are parts of Sunrise Highway on Long Island (NY) where the westbound speed limit is 55 MPH and the eastbound lanes are 40 MPH. It’s a divided highway, three lanes in each direction, wide grassy mediun between. Westbound (fast) traffic has only a railroad embankment alongside, whereas the eastbound lanes run along a section with parking lots for a big shopping center, some restaurants and gas stations. So obviously it was decided to slow traffic on one side only.