There has been a big debate going around town for as long as I can remember in regards to a particular major thoroughfare.
The debate is: Is this street four lanes or two?
The facts:
[li]The road lines are painted to make it only two lanes wide through the central area of town, which also includes a residential area. This stretch is approximately 2-3 miles long. Oustide of this “two lane” zone, the road is indeed painted into 4 lanes, both to the west and east. I think this why people are getting thrown off. They go from four wide, to two wide, then back to four wide again, in either direction.[/li][li]Drivers insist on disregarding this stretch as two lanes, and “enforce” their “belief” that it’s 4 lanes wide.[/li][li]While the road is wide enough, in the questionable stretch, to “fit” 4 vehicles driving parallel, is is not wide enough IMHO to safely fit 4 vehicles.[/li]
I therefore conclude that this section of the road is two lanes, not four. Anybody else, anywhere else, have the same type of dilemma?? What’s the SD on this?
[Moderator Hat ON]
This sounds like it would be better suited to IMHO. Off ye go.
[Moderator Hat OFF]
And in my opinion? It’s two lane. However, I’d probably drive it like a four lane if I didn’t have to drive exactly parallel to another car. On those ultra-wide two lanes I usually pick one side or the other of the lane to drive on so other cars can pass if they feel they must, and I’ll pull up parallel to another car to make a righthand turn, even if it’s not techically four lane.
Well, it could just be a case fo a city poorly marking its street, which is not unheard of. When I was growing up, the city of Lowell, Mass was NOTORIOUS for badly marked streets. There wasn’t a drop of paint anywhere in the city, which became a pain in the ass near the numerous non-standard intersections, which had no marked turning lanes. Plus, it was hard to tell if you were on “your side”; how many lanes the road has, etcetera. There were really NO pavement markings anywhere in the city. About 6-7 years ago they added a few markings near some busy intersections, but as far as I remember, most stretches of open street still have no markings delineating “lanes.” People just kinda stayed to the right, and everyone got along OK.
For the record, Chicago has a similar problem to what the OP is asking, and I usually defer to pavement markings over apparent width. If the road is wide, but only has one marked lane in my direction, I drive down the middle of it. Fuck those people who just HAVE to be going faster than everyone else. The road has 1 lane, deal with it.
what determines the number of lanes: painted lines or traffic
Until I moved to Boston, I thought the painted lines were the lanes.