I know we love arguing about traffic here, but I thought maybe we could all get behind hating on this intersection. As kind of a group bonding experience or something. Here’s a Google Maps link.
South State Street, in Ann Arbor, runs N-S (up and down), with two lanes in each direction. There’s also what looks like a third lane that is actually a ramp onto the freeway. Many people coming from all three directions want to use that freeway ramp, which is pretty short before it separates from State Street, so there’s not much distance to merge into it. South State is a busy road, especially during the evening rush hour.
There’s a street coming from the right, with two lanes that cross northbound State, entering the lanes in the median. Both of those lanes must turn left onto southbound State Street. There’s another road (an exit from the nearby mall) with two lanes that turn right onto State street. There is no signalling there, just a stop sign for the traffic from the right and the left.
I hate this intersection. I only ever use the left lane crossing the median, to turn into the left lane of State Street. I’ll still get cut off by the traffic coming from the mall in the left lane, when the second car at the stop sign just follows the first instead of stopping. Or the car in the right hand lane in the median, to my right, will turn into the left lane of State street cutting me off, because it’s almost hopeless to try to turn into the proper lane on State Street.
Is this intersection design even legal? Perhaps “is it to code” would be a better question than “is it legal”, but I do wonder about liability for whoever is responsible for it.
Those crosslanes between N/S State Street have never bothered me, but I hate the exit from Briarwood Mall, immediately to the west of your trouble spot, where the bus can be seen exiting. People in the far right lane leaving the mall are supposed to head south on State Street in the rightmost lane, so as to take the onramp to westbound I-94. While you’re waiting in that mall exit lane, there’s even a sign that marks that lane as for westbound I-94. And yet, people consistently turn from that lane into the centerlane of southbound state street; you can even see in that GoogleMap view that the silver minivan is getting ready to do exactly that.
But the center mall exit lane, also marked (on the pavement) for right-turn-only, has signage indicating that it’s for eastbound I-94 - which would be the centerlane of southbound State Street; follow that lane south, and you’ll see that it gives you access to the cloverleaf onramp for eastbound I-94. The blue car next to the bus is smartly disregarding all of that and lining up for a dash to the far left lane of southbound State, because he knows the prick in the van is going to take his lane.
They need some paint lines on the pavement to show people which lane their supposed to turn into.
I learned how to drive in the town featuring this monstrosity. It was bad enough learning to drive on the left, approaching this bit of madness gave me cold sweats.
Is that 5 mini-roundabouts in addition to crossing traffic and making you drive on the left? If I lived there, I’d repaint the thing overnight as a public service. Or destroy it
For your added crazy-making reading (and driving) pleasure: There are a variety of convoluted road junction designs, with creative names like Jughandle ; Texas U-Turn ; Michigan Left ; Bowtie ; and many more.
Wikipedia has articles on lots of them, with diagrams (some of them animated!). Here’s a page with a catalog of them.
And here’s an article with an overview of many of them. Check out the “Cloverstack Junction” and the “Turbine Junction”, among others.
The diagrams look like something from a Boy Scout knot-tying manual.
It looks like a 3/4 intersection but with the left turns from the side street allowed, not left turns from the main street. That kind of defeats the purpose as the former movement is a lot less safe than the latter, and the reason for building 3/4 intersections in the first place. If I were designing it I’d probably have a full access signalized intersection in the middle, and regular 3/4 intersections top and bottom.
Hey, I have to navigate Chicago’s Spaghetti Bowl every day. At least twice. A ridiculous number of spots where you need to shift four lanes of traffic to make your exit if you don’t know it well (and only two if you do). Just to make it more fun, they have reversible lanes tossed into the mix, which may or may not be open in your direction at sometimes unpredicatable times. So your left lane suddenly turns into and ending lane, and 892,326 other mooing cattle are trying to make it through the chute to the right.
They’ve decided they’re going to throw a few million at it and “fix” it. Which of course will create unbelievable traffic congestion while they’re closing various parts. And their notion of fixing it, so far, seems to be to add more lanes to an already ridiculously dangerous design.
