Is there any good reason? There are stretches of highway around my home where exits may be miles apart so if you miss an exit you may have to drive 10 miles or more out of your way to turn around. However, there is often an oasis on that stretch. Why not allow motorists access to the other side of the highway to turn around at an oasis?
Money?
How so? The oasis has access form both sides/directions of the highway already. Most just have a barrier that seems to intentionally be blocking access to the other side. It’s almost as if they’ve spent additional funds to prevent it.
The interchanges that allow you to switch directions on the freeway are fairly large & involved concrete structures which take up a lot of space, require extra lighting & maintenance. Plus, I have only ever seen those someplace where a road or other highway/freeway crosses the freeway. A simple offramp to an oasis and onramp back in the direction you were originally heading is a lot smaller, cheaper, and cheaper to maintain.
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But as I said the oasis already has access to both directions. In some cases there is literally a concrete barrier preventing access from on parking lot to the other. No other construction would be required other than to remove the barrier.
Upon further reflection, could it be that the glut of traffic wanting to turn around would clog the oasis and choke off any potential revenue from actual costumers?
You mean they’d cross over the highway, right? They’d need a lane for each direction and would probably add 50% to the width. It would probably mess with toll collection, too.
Another benefit: They’d only need one gas station at each oasis.
Are you talking about toll roads?
For those highways, they do not want people entering at exits 1 and 20, meeting at an oasis to exchange passengers or goods, and then returning to exits 2 and 19, paying only a minimal fare for having used a long stretch of highway.
If you are talking about freeways, I would have to say that I have never seen an oasis in the center of the road except on toll roads, (and darned few of those).
Central oases are a traffic hazard with slower trucks and cars pulling trailers leaving and entering the high speed lane and are pretty rare.
If you’re starting to mention potential revenue, we may be thinking about different things… by oasis, I thought you meant a place where there’s an offramp, which then splits in two with parking for big rigs on one side and cars on the other, and in between there’s a building with restrooms, vending machines, some picnic tables and a place to walk your dog.
Is that what you were talking about? If so, allowing people to just pull a U turn in the middle of the freeway is generally not thought highly of (hence all the “NO U TURN” signs at the places they leave for police & emergency vehicles to turn around, and for the general populace, they require either a full cloverleaf intersection or an offramp leading to a bridge over the freeway, or an underpass, all of which are much more expensive than just the rest stop.
When I used to actually get toll tickets ( which hasn’t been for years) the tickets had a schedule listing the price from where you entered to all the subsequent exits in that direction. I wouldn’t want to be stuck in line while a toll taker figured out what toll was due for someone who entered at Exit 5 southbound and exited at Exit 8 southbound. And even with electronic tolls, this sort of thing would probably have to be handled by a human being. Easier and cheaper to just not allow u-turns , especially since it seems that the oases seem to be concentrated in a relatively small area.
I’d call that a rest stop or rest area.
I thought an oasis was always a structure over the roadway with entrance and exit ramps for each direction but I hadn’t considered one in the center of the roadway, between each direction’s lanes. The only one of that type I’ve seen is the McDonald’s on the Chicago Skyway.
Maybe the OP can give us a specific example? A map link would help greatly, since it seems that we’re not quite understanding the situation.
Not really. I’m talking about large structures that span a toll road. You can enter from either side of the tollway but can only exit on the same side. They usually house a number of smaller fast food places (McD’s BK, Subway, etc.) a snack shop or two (Auntie Annie’s, Baskin Robbin’s, etc.) a Starbucks/coffee joint, an ATM, bathrooms, a convenience store, and for some odd reason always seem to have a prepaid cell phone store.
Like this:
I’ve seen rest areas in the center of the road which allow u-turns but I think only on the Garden State Parkway, which doesn’t toll based on how long you traveled on it , but rather by passing or exiting at certain points.
I had no idea this was not a commonly known type of structure. Ignorance fought I guess.
I still want to be able to cross the GD toll-road at one :mad:
I’m having a difficult time visualizing an oasis like this. The ones I’m familiar with here in the Chicago area only have a building in the middle, at least as far as the ones I can remember. They’d have to build an entire road to access the other side. Am I not understanding the question correctly, or are there other oases?
Like, look here. I don’t think I understand exactly what you’re trying to describe.
Or this one (which is the one I was originally looking for, but had Hillside instead of Hinsdale on my mind.).
In that case, I agree with tomndebb–it’s just a sign of The Man keeping us down. And, you know, help us to not break the law and stuff.
I had no idea what the OP was about until I read through the responses. Apparently you’re referring to what everyone in the northeast call rest stops. I had never heard the term oasis used before.
Is this a midwestern term? If so, how far east and west does it go?
If you are talking about rest stops, common in the Midwest in remote areas, putting in an overpass or underpass would be very expensive. And for what gain? How likely is it for someone to leave the highway at a remote rest stop and want to turn around and go back?
Besides, not all rest stops are located across from each other.
Consider it lucky that rest stops exist at all. Being so remote, they’re hard to maintain. Without some of them, you’d be facing many miles of highway with no way to stop or get off at all.
The overpass already exists.
Here’s the link I posed earlier: http://tollwayoases.com/