General Road and Highway Discussion

[Canard]

I think having the 2 lanes on King going through the Dixon/Montgomery intersection is fine as-is. With 2 lanes you can get more traffic through the intersection in a single light cycle. Then there's 400m to speed up, which opens up room between the cars to allow a merge to single-file.

I mean this honestly and am not trying to come across as rude: have you ever driven through this intersection in this direction (coming off the highway) before? If not, I'll happily mount my GoPro this week and slightly alter my commute to get some footage to show you how bad it is.

Your proposal (and how it is, now) is dynamite on paper. But human psychology doesn't work that way and it's terrible to go through. I dread it every time. If people perfectly zipper-merged and people were patient and kind and understanding, it'd work great. Instead, you get the majority of people queueing on the right, with the aggressive drivers on the left, who then floor it and do 80-90 up the hill to the merge, ramming their way in. Then somebody pushes the pedestrian crosswalk and 50 cars stop for 2 minutes while one person saunters across (sorry, but true), and since the crosswalk is so close to the merge point, those folks in the left lane really have to give 'er to make it to the merge first!

I shake my head every time when I come to the "lane ends" sign and watch people in the lane that is ending not realize and just drift over.

It is a terrible arrangement.