Hey I’m in New Jersey on business, and I was wondering…
What’s up with all these left turns? For those who don’t know, a lot of the roads out here have a system where to turn left, you take an exit ramp of sorts and then all turns, left and right, are off of the main road a bit.
Is this a newer idea or an older idea than the left turn lanes I see in Chicago? Does it work well? What do city planners think about this system?
They’re called jughandles.
Consider yourself initiated.
Ah, yes…jughandles.
“You must turn right to turn left.” 
Ah yes…
I was initiated while attempting to have a lesbian first date (ie drive a u-haul) through Parsipany NJ. To this day I refer to the town as “Persnickety” NJ, because I had a hard time remember the actual name of the town, and I was unaware at the time that the entire state was afflicted with such things, convinced that it was isolated to one sadistic town.
I was also more than a little cranky because my gf and I had been forced to spend the previous (cold) night sleeping in the cab of said u-haul while parked in a bank parking lot, due to a small financial oversight. All I was trying to do was turn around and go back to the McDonalds we’d passed, because it was apparently the only place to get breakfast at 6:00am in that part of town, damnit!
(A little unsolicited advice…avoid trying to move your girlfriend from Boston to Atlanta when: a) you don’t have much money in the first place b) you have direct deposit but the funds aren’t made available right away due to a holiday weekend c) the gf deposited her hard-earned paycheck into the Boston ATM of her bank, which also meant her money wasn’t posted to her account for a few days either. Motel clerks tend to respond to such stories with an apathetic shrug, and you end up in a bank parking lot having to wake up every hour to turn on the engine and run the heater if you don’t want to freeze to death. Then you find yourself scrounging pocket change for gas, just trying to get the gas-guzzling u-haul to your friend’s house in North Carolina…and then…)
This has piqued my interest slightly. I’ve come across this layout precisely once in the UK. And in true Manchester style, we only ended up using the jughandle because the road signs were two years out of date and so didn’t indicate the new section of motorway. So I can understand the reason for the junction being built that way, when major traffic needed to take that route, and building anything else would have involved major house demolition. But anyway, they do exist outside the US, at least in limited numbers.
Do they exist anywhere else in the U.S. besides New Jersey? I don’t think I’ve ever seen them anywhere else.
A few have infiltrated into neighboring areas of PA, but seem to be disappearing in favor of more conventional intersections.
This is more IMHO than anything else, but yes, I think they work well, especially on really busy roads like highway 1. Exiting from the right to get to a cross-street, and then going through the intersection in the direction of the cross-street is easier than trying to make a left turn in the intersection against heavy oncoming traffic.
Unless, of course, someone tries to combine a jughandle with a traffic circle like the one where Washington Road meets highway 1 near Princeton. Then you can’t even go through the intersection in the direction of the cross-street without turning right into the circle and following the circle around looking for the second right turn but the lanes aren’t clearly marked and there are cars passing you on every damn side and the light’s about to change and oh sweet merciful god traffic’s coming at me from all directions at once and I don’t know how to get out of the damn intersection HELP ME I’M GOING TO DIE…
Um. Sorry. Flashback. Won’t happen again.
But yeah, plain old jughandles are just dandy.
US Route 1 in both Rhode Island and Massachusetts (in Southie, anyway) has jughandles. I’ve used them all my life, and they seem to work fine, assuming you know it’s coming. If you’ve positioned yourself in the left lane for a left-hand turn, you can be easily caught off guard. And then you and your U-haul need to keep going to find the next McDonalds…
As someone who used to live on Harrison Street (one jug handle away from the one mentioned) I feel your pain. As someone who got hit going through the Pennington Circle, I feel it even more. :eek: The Washington Street circle plays a big role in Judy Blume’s second Fudge book.
The big problem with jug handles is when they fill up so much you can’t get into them to make the turn. There were some, near Princeton, I just avoided.
BTW, on the first Car Talk CD of the songs they play at breaks, there is a song about jug handles, called You Can’t Get There from Here in Jersey talking about the joy of always being on the wrong side of the road.
But all in all, NJ beats Boston for driving.
I didn’t realize the benefit for the jughandle until I moved to Maryland. When you have some dope in the left lane with the left turn signal on going at least 10 mph below the speed limit for the last five miles looking for whatever it is they find so important on the other side of the road that requires them to drive like idiots looking for somegodforsakenthingontheothersideofthefreakinroad - you realize the usefulness of the jughandle.
It keeps all the idiots to the right all the time.
BUT - if you think jughandles are bad don’t go to Michigan.
And yeah you do sense some hostility there.
I never knew they were called jughandles before, but I’ve come across a few of them here in the San Francisco Bay Area.
Oddly enough, the ones that I can think of off the top of my head are all on northbound El Camino Real between Palo Alto and San Mateo, a distance of about 20 miles.
Now we understand why Michigan has No-Fault laws.
As an insurance adjuster, I can anecdotally say that the majority of accidents are caused by (1) rear-ending the car in front of you, or (2) making a left turn at an intersection in front of oncoming traffic. In theory, the jughandle makes sense to me. However, being the victim of not knowing about the proverbial jughandle, I can see why there’s a ton of out-of-town traffic driving slow in the left lane looking for that illusive left turn intersection.
I don’t get it. In what way is driving across twice as many lanes of traffic traveling in two directions easier than making a left turn?
Just zipped through that one about a half hour ago. I wouldn’t call that silly thing a proper jughandle, though one uses jughandle-like tactics to navigate it. Been driving through it for 15 years, so it ain’t no big deal, but visitors always have a puzzled look on their first encounter. Oh yes, my dented old pickup truck makes things a whole lot easier: people with nice cars let me go right on through.
I never knew the term, but I can see their utility. I know of a couple in Vermont (north of Bennington on 7A) and New Hampshire on route 9 entering Keene from the northeast.
They also have something similar in the village of Scotia, NY, though that uses existing streets.
The advantage is clear: you don’t have to allow left turns that back up traffic.
Now left exits of limited access highways are a just plain terrible idea (and NJ has its share of them), but these seem useful.
Can someone point me to an online example of jughandles similar to the link shown for Michigan turns?
FWIW, Michigan turns are supurb! It makes traffic flow super, super smooth (well, compared to having left turn lanes on blvds). I’ve seen lots of congestion in areas where there are left-turn lanes instead of Michigan lefts. Thank God they’re disappearing.
Something old and revised that’s being called “new” is becoming popular again: Warning PDF!. I dunno if these apply to blvds., though.
:smack: That would be second date, of course. (Thanks Eddie)
It’s not necessarily easier for you; it’s easier for the people behind you, who don’t have to wait as you sit there blocking the lane waiting for a gap in the oncoming traffic. This system gets you off the main road. At least, that’s if the set-up being described is the one I think it is.
Of course, on the downside, it gobbles up shedloads of land at every junction.
Because you have a green light and the other traffic is stopped at a red light. Jug handles are used with traffic lights. If you had to turn right than scoot through two or more oncoming lanes of traffic without a light it wouldn’t make sense. It is safer than making a left turn when you think its clear.