Near my apartment, there’s an intersection where it looks like they had planned on continuing the road in one direction, but for whatever reason, they haven’t. It’s a T intersection, except one of the roads continues after the intersection for about six feet, then just stops.
What’s weird is, they painted lines on the partial street, even putting half of a left turn arrow in the left turn lane, and there’s reflectors and everything. It’s like six feet of normal street with all the typical markings and then it just ends in a fence. There’s even a functioning stop light. For the fence, I guess, in case it wants to enter traffic.
So, what’s the point? Using up funds that have been budgeted for road construction? Or is there another reason?
How long has it been there? I’m guessing that it will be linked up to something in due course, and as Shamozzle says, it’s easier and cheaper to build the intersection and traffic signals all in one go rather than having to add bits on later.
In addition to what others have said, is it possible that the jurisdiction of road building and maintenance changes at that point? On some of the roads near where I live, there are signs designating where county maintenance ends and city maintenance begins. I have seen road crews repaving a road and they work right up to that sign and then stop.
They did the same thing at the end of my road when they put in a stop light. There was one house on the other side of the road, whose driveway would have come out at the stop light. This apparently wasn’t acceptable, so they put in a six foot section of road, complete with a little line down the middle, so that technically this one person would have to enter a “street” before going through the stop light.
In all likelihood, what would be the extension of the road that ends at the T across the intersection if it actually existed is a “paper street” – one that is set off legally “on the map” as deeded or legal right-of-way but which has not yet been constructed, though it is planned to do so in the future. Building the intersection not as a T-corner but as a four-way intersection with one way only built as much as is needed to produce the curves in the pavement to make that turn is more economical than building it as a T-corner and then ripping out paved area to construct the turn when the new road is built.
Alternatively, it may have been built that way because certain vehicles need that access for some reason. This can range from “Construction vehicles need to exit the highway at this point to build the shopping center planned for that parcel of land” to “School buses or snowplows need to be able to turn around at this point, which marks the end of their legal route, and this short access gives them room to do so safely.”
A gloss on this scenario: in many areas, new housing is built by developers who are required to build the roads. The existing roads, stripes, and lights may have been installed to save money, but also to comply with contractual obligations or codes.
Here is a satellite photo of the intersection in question. The road does not appear on the map, at all, not even the completed section. You can’t see really the lines and arrows in the picture though, but the paint appears to be the same age as the paint elsewhere.
It’s been like that since I moved here two years ago. My husband can’t really remember when the last time they worked on that section of road was, but it was anywhere from four to eight years ago.
There has been some building on that side of the road since that picture was taken, but it’s still an empty lot at the end of and on one side of the road to nowhere, and there’s no access from that street to that building next to it, or anything else, except there is a pedestrian foot path that can be accessed through an opening in the fence, which I’ve never noticed and my husband just now told me about.
I can understand why they’d build six feet of road, having the curbs in place for future continuation of the road makes perfect sense. It’s the fact that they actually took the time to paint double yellow lines, lane markings, and half a left turn arrow that makes me ponder why.
Anyway, I might be going down that way sometime today after work, and if I do, I can snap a photo and post it later on, if anyone’s interested.
I so want my parent’s home town to be high res in Google Maps because it has this great little road that ends in a pointed curve! It’s a typical side road when you enter it from the main street it leads off of, and in fact, from that location, it looks like it simply curves behind the houses you can see. Only it doesn’t. The curve is an illusion, and the road comes to a point, making it kind of hard to turn around if you’ve driven too far down it! It has completed curbs and everything (though I don’t think it had painted lines, since it’s so short). I think it is quite fun that the city bothered to build it that way… unless some intrepid resident decided to do it!
Yes. In addition to what others have said, it would allow contractors to begin work on the new road without disrupting traffic on the existing roads, or being at risk from working in close proximity to heavy traffic flow.
That does seem strange - it could be that the plans given to the road painting contractors inadvertently included the whole of the planned extra road and that they just tried to complete their job to the best of their ability in the space available - or perhaps did so because they feared to omit it would form some sort of loophole for which they would be penalised.
