05-07-2016, 10:40 PM
(05-07-2016, 10:31 PM)Canard Wrote: So this past week, the lane arrangement at the base of the flyover connecting Highway 8 East to 401 East was reconfigured. For the worse.
Previously, 2 lanes on the ramp connected to 3 lanes on 401 - briefly making a 5-lane arrangement, allowing traffic to merge, before the right two lanes ended sequentially dropping from 4, then to 3 lanes.
The new configuration ends the rightmost lane of the two on the ramp just before the merge point. On 401, the rightmost lane disappears just before the merge, so 401 goes down to two lanes. The single lane on the ramp becomes the third, rightmost lane on 401 continuing on.
The problem with this arrangement is that the effective lane capacity decreases before it increases, creating an absolutely massive bottleneck on 8 every morning.
The shift only moved the merge points 100 m or so West, but it's absolutely destroyed whatever efficiency was left at this interchange.
I'm trying to imagine this - does it happen anywhere else on the 401? It seems to give reason to all those drivers who insist on sitting only in the centre lane of the 401.