Do TURNING LANES really deserve their terrible nickname?
ฝัง
- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 4 พ.ค. 2021
- Traffic travels in both directions. So it makes sense we'd have a malicious moniker for two-way left turn lanes (TWLTLs). Are they actually dangerous, though? Let's look at the safety of these middle lanes. After all, they are on roads pretty much everywhere in the United States.
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Sources cited:
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Mukherjee, D. Choosing Between a Median and a TWLTL. ITE Journal, 1993, pp. 25-30. citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/...
Ballard, J. Computer Simulation Study of the Operational Effects of Two-Way Left-Turn Lanes on Urban Four-Lane Roadways. Transportation Research Record, 1988, pp.1-10. onlinepubs.trb.org/Onlinepubs/...
A Policy on Geometric Design of Highways and Streets, AASHTO, Washington, pp. 9-182-9-183.
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Additional reading:
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Tabin, S. Truck Involved in Crash That Killed a BYU Student Belonged to Deputy, Sheriff’s Office Says. The Salt Lake Tribune, Mar 18, 2021. www.sltrib.com/news/2021/03/1... - ยานยนต์และพาหนะ
All my homies love infrastructure videos
Practical Engineering
Everything's infrastructure these days, though...
All my homies are me
th-cam.com/video/ORzNZUeUHAM/w-d-xo.html
If you not watching engineering videos 😤
Get up out my trap house! 😡🏡🤯
The ‘Your grandma likes nickelback’ @2:27 had me dying
🤦♂️
It's my favourite new insult
There’s no need for that kind of language!
🤣
I've listened to that part several times now
I flipped backwards out of my chair!
I thought i heard that, wasn't sure.
This is so good. Well done!
I’m so glad to see you appreciate Rob’s videos. He puts so much time and effort into them I’m so happy he is gaining success!
Time for a Practical Rob Guy Engineering collab?
"Do keep right laws reduce traffic jams?"
Grady, are there any other smaller infrastructure/engineering/urban design channels you know of? I'm addicted to this type of content, and honestly at the age of 31 I'm beginning to think I should go back to school to become an urban planner or traffic engineer. It's all so fascinating!
Left turns are the worst how could engineers not figure out a system where we can only take right turns, I blame engineers for all of everything that has ever gone poorly because they didn't think about it long enough
This is also connected to the concept known as a "stroad" where road designers have tried to make a road both easily accessible for all vehicles and fast.
and makes a terrible, unsafe, ugly and inefficient mess
@@einar8019 Yeah looking at this as a Dutch person this looks like a nightmare. A ridiculous amount of lanes, more than most of our highways have. Combined with turns that make you cross several friggin lanes. Who signed off on this insane death trap! No wonder America has so many more traffic accidents and fatalities. This primitive road type should at the very least get roundabouts added to it.
These stroads also looks like an ocean of asphalt in such a rural area.
Yes. Rob gets _so close_ at th-cam.com/video/U5NvNXuMuww/w-d-xo.html. He identifies the problem, then proceeds with the assumption that we're stuck with the stroad. When in fact there's a good argument for simply eliminating the stroad and requiring only types 1 and 2 (streets and roads).
Of course, here in the US we are decades away from achieving anything close to that, even if we were to start (and so far, it doesn't look like we will). So we're going to be dealing with the TWLTL's for some time to come, and need this sort of analysis to decide how to deal with left turns. But it seems like that analysis should _always_ be including the observation that the real problem is all those stroads (practically all of the example roads shown in this video are stroads!).
....and failed miserably at both. They are absolutely hostile to anything but cars, so walking or bikes are completely impractical. Therefore anyone is driving. Result: Traffic can move at a snails pace and there are no faster (safe) alternatives.
The only acceptable stroad is 3 total lanes, 1 each way plus the center turning lane is upto 40% safer than a 4 lane total stroad. If you need more then you should find an alternative to cars.
That chart showing how 32 conflict points goes down to 8 is probably the simplest way you could convince someone that roundabouts should at least be considered for intersections.
Roundabouts are great but a nightmare to engineer for current existing infrastructure.
Austin McConnel did an excellent video of them.
@@Penoatle really depends on the amount of traffic and how much you want cars to move in groups vs not.
@@Penoatle I think one of the main issues is for the same volume of traffic, a roundabout takes up considerably more space. To convert many junctions into roundabouts corner lots would have to be demolished, which in a big city isn't viable. Generally regular roundabouts are only an option on new roads or junctions with lots of space around them.
There was a particularly infamous intersection in my county - see rural VT - until the state went through and put in a (one lane) roundabout. Even as poorly designed as it is, and the fact that NO ONE up here knows how to drive the damn thing, it still dramatically reduced the number of accidents.
@@Croz89 Yes and that is what I was saying.
We need a Road Guy Rob/Not Just Bikes collab! Call it something like: “Conflict Point: A Stroad Too Far”
The crossover I didn't know I needed!
I Ctrl+F'd "stroad" to find a comment like this and FB's, haha.
That would be awkward at best. NJB is a stick up fool in fantasyland while RGR lives in the real world.
@@SpruceOaks You don't have to be stuck in fantasyland to believe what NJB believes. After all, countries such as The Netherlands really do have very few stroads, so it really is possible.
I think the reason lays mostly in the fact that Dutch development was already compact before the car era started. You cannot really make a stroad in downtown, there's simply no space. So you build high-speed bypasses (highways) without local access. There were definitely some stroads built in the 60s, but many are reverted back to local streets. If there's space, a parallel acces road is built, which you barely see in the US.
I think a comparison between countries would be interesting. You don't have to blame the US, I get that it grew naturally the way the US is developed. NJB does a fair bit of bashing North-America, but I also think he does it to convince people that it _can_ be changed.
@@SpruceOaks oh yeah the Netherlands is fantasyland compared to America 😂😂😂
"A roundabout is the world's shortest median". Mind blown. 🤯
The usage of the memes and the production quality is high af
No YOU'RE high af
"...they made minor mistakes, the kind of mistakes we make every single day..."
With a Taco Bell behind him, you wonder if he's choosing to eat at Taco Bell.
The suffering is worth it sometimes.
A reflection on the human condition. We like the food, just not the consequences of eating the food.
I would die for my spicy potato soft tacos
Hahaha 🤣
Taco Bell is never a mistake! Also does anybody have some extra pants I can borrow
Lol, living in the Netherlands, I marvelled at these abhorrent ‘engineering best practices’ when visiting the US for the first time. It’s really sad that you have these stroads and their accompanying horrors.
A video on the history of road design internationally, and why the US diverged in the ways they did, would be really interesting.
The roads in the Netherlands are so much better then anywhere else I've been. Everything is setup to minimize conflict points. safety comes first in every situation. Not Just Bikes has some good videos about the topic.
As an American who watches Not Just Bikes a lot...wow I was thinking the same thing. I’d say I’ve totally changed my thinking on road design in the last year or two just from reading Strong Towns and watching Not Just Bikes.
Agreed. But Americans balk at paying more state and federal tax. So, they get what they pay for. No one ever mentions that Dutchies can pay up to 52% income tax, not to mention all the other taxes. Of course, a lot of that money goes to keeping their feet dry and fantastic asphalt on the snelwegen (highways).
Netherlands have a great system designed for the 17.28 million people that live there.
For the 328 million Americans, things are engineered in a way with that exciting level of chaos.
The origin of the term "suicide lane" is from the 1930s through 60s when roads were regularly marked with a third lane that could be used for passing in each direction - thus a high chance of a high speed collision. And that's where the unique "passing zone" center lane markings come from! They were later repurposed as turn lanes or converted to asymmetrical highways. Source: Grandfather, born in 1937, PennDOT assistant district manager 25 years, retired 1993.
Oh, that makes sense! I was wondering why the turn lanes were long continuous lanes. Have only seen short turn lanes that only go in one direction (often with a matching crossover turn lane right after it in the opposite direction) here in Sweden. Often separated by a median on busy roads.
BC still has some of these in the form of "yield center lane to opposing traffic" but one direction gets priority. Somehow 3 lanes seems like it could be safer than 2
as an european this is scary to me jesus, like we do have turn lanes but they're heavily guided, not just do what you want lol
And since every state has their own traffic laws and needs/designs; everything is vastly different from each other.
You also send your children to school totally unarmed and defenceless against school shooters. In America even 4-year-old nursery school children rock dual Uzis with infrared scopes. Most children wear ammo belts around their shoulders like Rambo. Some children even rock flamethrowers and cruise missile launchers, for self defense obviously. Babies even carry little pop pop pistols in case Mummy doesn't want to make breastfeeding. In some states the teachers carry rocket launchers in case ISIS would hijack a fighter plane with nuclear bombs on it to drop on civilian areas. In many areas in United States it is not uncommon multiple school shooters show up per day, the first one goes in 7:30am in the morning and kills everyone second one sleeps in 8:30 he goes in everyone is already dead, he sets the alarm earlier the next morning, next morning it is actually Saturday, all the children are gone, at home watching cartoons, the shooter does arson instead, burns the fucker down. America is like Wild West, extreme violence every single day. Road design is no big deal. Man dies in traffic collision - take his wallet and strip the car for scrap metal.
This is a cultural difference sissy European men cannot understand.
@@Simon-nw9bf Bro...we're talking about roads
@@Simon-nw9bf HAHAHAHA this is some quality satire-and if it isn't, it better be for the writer's reputation lol
As a European, I've never seen turn lanes in 4-lanes roads in small towns. If they widen a road to 2 lanes per direction, they basically act as if it was a small freeway with 2 levels intersections or roundabouts
The subtitles at 11:35 are a piece of art
And so is the rest of the video, to be honest
I had to turn on captions to check it out. Thanks! Good stuff.
But it is such a sweet sound.
2:23 "Your grandmother likes Nickelback!"
Ha!
One typical thing I've seen about turning lanes is that the turning car stops in the normal lane stopping all traffic and then slowly goes into the turning lane but with the rear end of the car still in the original lane continuing to hinder traffic. So, the turning lane becomes useless.
You should be allowed to shear of the offending car bit because it's in your driving lane parked improperly.
@@paulwoodman5131 uhhhh... no. Because usually it's sticking out far enough that you don't get to shear a piece of it off, but instead you're ramming it and pushing it into oncoming traffic at a dangerous angle.
@@edwardmiessner6502 that's when you pop out with a huge angle grinder and take a quarter of the fella's rear end. It's totally safe, trust me. I'm a doctor.
That really gets my ire up
Yeah hit the car! That’s what I would do.
I actually avoid left hand turns crossing traffic when leaving a parking lot at all cost, I get huge anxiety. It drives my friends and family crazy that I take 20 more seconds to realign our course, but I've seen to many videos and had to many close calls to even consider it. I always roll my window down to listen. My #1 is motorcycles, to many nightmare stories, too many blindspots.
Anyone with a shred of sanity left should avoid those at all cost. Maybe it's because here in Europe we rarely incounter *such* bad road design, so I'm not used to tthem, but objectively viewed, turning left there is an absolutely ludacric idea.
I mean the whole concept of stroads. When I first read, that UPS Drivers are forced to only use right turns, I thought that was kinda insane. But I didn't grew up with stroads either. That rule makes 100% sense on stroads.
true, for reasons of safety and efficiency... when I am planning a day of stop and errands, I build it in my mind that its all key right hand turns to get into and out of the business. Which, ironically, creates a big ass left hand loop
My wife got hit like that a few months ago. I had routinely asked that she not go out that driveway when picking me up because the poor visibility. This time she was the one coming along the road and got hit by somebody making a left at that same spot. It's a street with two lanes in that she'd have to cross to get to the turn lane, and it's just tricky to do that so close to a traffic light no matter how careful you are.
Nobody was injured, but she's still working on getting her car fixed from that.
@@sagichdirdochnicht4653 The issue is how they're sometimes set up. If they're done properly, they're supposed to be relatively short with a raised curb in the middle. Around here we'll have multiple lanes per block sometimes ones that are left turn lanes near the end of the block, and in the middle be for the use of cars trying to exit from parking lots.
This whole business of them going on for blocks and blocks is insanity, but it is something that we also have along with those.
If you're having huge anxiety you probably should turn in your license...you probably do 55 in a 70 in the left lane too
You need to do a video on the "Michigan Left" turn traffic design.
My city is starting to put concrete medians in so you have to make a u turn to get to the other side. I was skeptical at first but traffic flows so much better now.
Did usa just discovered this lol
@@danialrafiqi9346 no idea. But I've noticed they are being implemented more so in smaller cities that have grown so much and so fast that it's the only way to get traffic back under control in such a short time. A lot of 2 lanes here are being expanded to 4 lanes and they already feel congested like the 2 lanes had become. The human race is expanding too fast and are taking the woodlands with it. I didn't even recognize the city I grew up in down in Georgia when I visited a few weeks ago. They even tore down my old high-school to make suburbs.
@@Draega007 in my country, lane for city/suburban neighbourhood are kept max at 2 lanes, 3 lanes for highway (freeway as you call it). The city here is not plan with grid because of the terrain which are not flat but every 2 lane road has a small median. Houses or business area are not placed infront of main road. They separate it with another road so that main traffic can still flow through. Eventhough there are many people lives here, the city still looks the same. They didn’t sacrifice area to turn it into widen the road but invest more in public transportation like Light weight rail on top of ground. Sorry for my bad English. Its not my mothers tongue
@@danialrafiqi9346 Same in Italy. Never seen streets that wide without a median or without intersections being regulated by traffic lights/roundabouts.
@@danialrafiqi9346 this is nothing new, Michigan has had this for years on select roads, like the creatively named michigan avenue.
I like the medians with the occasional left turn lanes. Don't have to stop for emergency vehicles if they're on the other side of the street and it's less stressful.
It never fails everytime i watch a road guy rob video it makes me want to play cities: skylines
City skylines would be great to get into
FACTS I WANNA add medians to my main streets now
Las Vegas is a special circumstance. The hotels there close the pools in the late afternoon so they don't have drunks drowning themselves or doing swan dives into the shallow end of the pool. Vegas must protect the pedestrians because the likelihood of either the driver or the pedestrian being drunk is very high.
its also just the crazy amount of pedestrians, if they start crossing at a crosswalk they will keep going and the traffic will never get to go.
Which incidentalyl make Las Vegas one of the best cities in the USA for all kinds of traffic, measured in number of people transported. A lot of them being drunk does not make that large of a difference.
In Las Vegas you can walk across the street (by using the pedestrian bridges), instead of driving. There are many US cities where that is impossible, which leads to more car traffic, which makes traffic worse for everyone.
@@57thorns a lot of them being drunk is important cause it's the reason the city is willing to go to such extreme levels to protect cars and pedestrians
A true Las Vegas spirit road would just say fuck it and have the bodies stack up. Drunk is only the beginning. YOLO!
So the moral of the story is the best way to improving transportation infrastructure and making cities more walkable is for everyone to get plastered constantly. Aye!
"That's a lot of conflict" got me. Lol
Welcome to America
Another solution, encourage businesses to share driveways. Orange County in FL did this along the I-Drive Corridor to increase the efficiency of the road a while back.
Edmonton does this! You can even drive down entire lengths of the city through private parking lots (although I wouldn't recommend it).
These connected lots greatly reduce the number of private entrances needed... And then on the few that do exist, traffic lights are installed!
It's brilliant!
th-cam.com/video/ORzNZUeUHAM/w-d-xo.html&pp=qAMBugMGCgJkZRAB
The center left-turn lane is also often used as a merging lane (traffic from driveway turns left into the center-left-turn and then merges with traffic) even though that's illegal.
Wait, that's illegal? It looks so dangerous to cross 3-5 lanes to get to your desired lane.
There's really no other way to do it though
Some of the time I’ve seen it done, I can understand why: traffic is never going to let up on both sides at once. However, the amount of times I’ve seen it used for that when there’s a clear shot inbound just pisses me the hell off
It’s not illegal in Michigan. We are taught to do that in drivers education. Makes turning left on busy roads so much easier.
Many of my friends and acquaintances have accused me of driving like an old lady. I’m somewhat comforted to find I was instinctively avoiding “conflict points”.
@@ithecastic This exactly, you’re absolutely correct.
The main problem with a two-way left turn lane that I and others have encountered is when two cars from each direction decide to turn at the same time in front of each other and it almost becomes a head-on collision. That's the problem when people have the ability to turn in whenever they want. A lot of cases, people's destinations happen to be within the same perimeter as someone from an opposing lane and it creates this very dangerous conflict. Another problem is that a lot of people either approach their turn too early or too late and sometimes people don't pull in all the way and their rear end is sticking out in the traveling lane. As a result, passing traffic has to veer around them which is very annoying. On a more positive note, fantastic video as always! I love watching these videos and furthering my knowledge on traffic engineering and philosophy. I've said it before and I'll say it again, your channel NEEDS MORE VIEWS!
Depends on the design criterea and the volume of turns. Where I practice, uf it happens too often or the driveway design anticipates triggers a turn lane warrant, the center turn lane is striped as a dedicated turn lane. But that turns into a legal fight between property owners.
This sucks even more on a motorcycle and an oncoming car pulls in early.
If the oncoming car wants to turn BEHIND the driveway you want to turn in, it quite literally becomes a head-on collision lane! 😂
I am baffled by this insane design
I always get a little bit of anxiety whenever I’m in a turning lane
The Oprah reference and the little Seinfeld baseline had me weak. Turning left is really like playing Russian roulette Lmaoo
And if you do get hurt in a wreck here, you can lose your life savings paying for the medical costs!
As a Canadian I have never heard the term "Suicide Lane" this is a very fascinating subject to me because I am learning about it for the first time.
The term largely refers to centre passing lanes. In BC they've been completely phased out and with their disappearance, so has the term.
Strangely, over there, the expression hasn't quite crossed over to two way turn lanes.
@@MilesLougheed it's funny we have them everywhere in onterrible and the trans canada runs through town here. Every time I see someone stopping in traffic to turn left and not use the lane it's usually ab plated. Here we have advanced or delayed green lights where the green flashes signalling that the opposing traffic has a red and you have priority to turn left. This screws up drivers from bc because it signifies pedestrian priority there (correct me if I'm wrong not sure on that one)
@@juliogonzo2718 yeah, flashing green in BC means pedestrian controlled intersection. I drove to Kenora last summer and watched all the BC drivers mess up the left turn downtown. It was hilarious. Probably happened half a dozen times while I was there.
in the uk we had those they were 3 lane roads the center lane was used to over take thing was both ways used it at the same time malor head shunts.ok in the 50's ok not so when traffic wanted to use 2 lanes both ways ouch.
@@juliogonzo2718 im from northern NY and can vouch for independently coming up with the suicide lane nickname for them (which is unfortunate because they are litterally safer than a 4 lane road).
Also why would you have anything other than a green arrow to indicate a protected turn where the oncoming traffic is stopped. (My hometown has a flashimg yellow arrow that nobody understands on 1 light, if the town actually told people what the flashing yellow arrow meant it would make the intersection alot safer)
12:39 Perfectly pronounced, don't worry ;)
I also agree that because a lot of roads just grew to what they are now you can't, or it is alteast pretty hard, to make a nice devide in what type of road there are. New roads with these turning lanes are still being build though and updating the regulations to make sure roads are build as either a fast A to B bit of infra or an access to shops and homes bit would be a great idea. The same goes for good cycling infra. If you make good regulations now the new roads that are put in will atleast be better cyclists and not as shit as what already exists.
I would really love if you would talk about the "Michigan Left" in your next video that you mentioned. This video was a great intro into how well the median works and it is clearly demonstrated throughout much of Michigan and any busy two-way road each way with a turn lane in a busy are has to be changed somehow
I'm a project engineer for a roadway contractor. I enjoy your videos. Your mix of professional presentation and local-news-presentation style are unique and interesting. It's also interesting to here stuff we discuss at work in your videos. Keep up the good work. Your videos keep getting better each upload.
Has it influenced your work or design considerations? Would be interesting to know whether the urban planners here on TH-cam have had any effect on the industry.
@@Rotwold I'm not in the level where those decisions are made. lol However, it is interesting to see the public-contractor crossover through his videos. It's also nice to hear other stories or similar projects, concepts, issues, etc. So with that, I can say there are times I'll think "what would Road Guy Rob want to video" during my aspects of work. 😂
Those turns lanes are a godsend in my book. There was a road near where I used to live that was an absolute traffic nightmare, until they added the turning lanes. Now it flows great. Without them cars are forced to stop in the road to turn, causing massive traffic backups and rear end accidents.
Totally agree.
hello, I'm 17 and I'm from Italy, i love your videos since i have a passion for roads, especially US ones and when i had founded you, it was a fantastic discovery, immediately subscribed, i love your channel because i can understand pretty well everything about roads in US, keep doing this videos, i can't wait for next ones
Im asking genuinely;
What is there to like about US roads?
You can tell so much effort and love goes into these videos. Rob absolutely never misses on these. Another great one, looking forward to seeing you give the median some deserved love.
He's got a patreon, definitely worth contributing. These are such high quality!
@@CountryMusic527 why would someone give him money when you can watch for free? This dude needs to make proper documentaries accessible by a paid channel only. I got some Wendover Productions shit queued on Nebula.
@@Simon-nw9bf I am proud to be one of his patreon supporters.
"Your grandma likes Nickelback!" lol Brutal! Seriously though, left turn lanes are both good and bad. There are several roads around me that have 4 lane traffic without a turn lane and yeah when someone goes to make a left and you're cruising along, ugh....Got to say I love the animations, they keep getting better it seems
Can you do a video on Michigan Lefts? they seem to solve this problem and have an interesting history.
In Europe, especially in the netherland, they specifically divide streets like that into a road (getting from a to b) and a street (getting to the source). American streets are this wide, there would easily be space to put a road with curbs and no possibilities to exit except regulated intersections in the middle and on both sides of this road a street with low speed and room for pedestrians and cyclists. This would seperate traffic with different needs, you also don’t need many turn lanes, it’s way more pleasant to bike or walk on a street than next to what’s built in the US and traffic would be safer since speeds are separated and there road is just one lane per direction. If there’s still some space you could use this for a bus lane to put people on public transit rather than cars.
i like their design. but im not sure these businesses connected to the main street would let the city take their driveway away for a access road sadly.
@@animaza5563 They might not need to. The roads are already wide. Lots of room to play around with access road.
i swear to god, rob, you make me a little better of a driver with every video. ive been driving for 12 years and i learn new things in every one of your videos.
As a European I am very happy this is not the place I go shopping. 5:25
I mean that what a car dependent society does. Public transportation should be an option, but it carries a bad stigma. If you use public transportation, socially it means your poor.
Wouter VanR took the words out of my mouth from when earlier Road Guy Rob said that there were only two choices - "highway or chaos". Smart, incremental growth - and fewer subsidies for sprawl.
The stroad strikes again.
yessir
Interesting that this video pops up after I watched Not Just Bikes video about "stroads" last week
Me too! And I immediately thought of that when he showed the first road. And whenever I drive around.
The stuff from strong towns is pretty interesting too. It’s a bit long, but great information.
@@jadonbertholf547 oh wow, I didn’t even know they had a channel. Not Just Bikes mentions his current series is based on strong towns and talks about their book. Looks like I have some new stuff to watch haha.
I'm a "victim" too! :D
Yeah Stroads are shit.
When I was learning to drive I got in that lane way too early and someone yelled at me "learn to drive!"
I'll get right on that, sir. ...
I learn so much from your videos. Thanks for all the time and effort you put into making quality content!
I see lots of stroads...
Great job, Rob. And no matter how well a street is designed, poor driving can make even the safest environment a nightmare. The most common scenario I see are drivers not turning into the appropriate lane.
I think having too many lanes at a junction can be a cause of that. Drivers can get easily confused and this makes them distracted.
The problem comes when people point fingers at the drivers. The Netherlands has the design of intersections reviewed and upgraded if there are bad accidents. Their philosophy of "sustainable safety" recognizes that humans make mistakes so have the onus on the infrastructure itself to limit conflict.
@@eriklakeland3857 I Wish njb would do a collaboration with rob
@@eriklakeland3857 well the Netherlanders have common sense. Here if there's a traffic accident at one of our ginormous intersections that could easily fit a roundabout the default is it's always at least one of the motorists who's at fault. Never the highway and traffic engineers and *certainly* not the feds who come up with these idiotic "best practices" guidelines in the first place! 😡🤬😡🤬😡
I live for the little details... I was certain we'd get a spoof ambulance chaser commercial in this one, but I was practically knocked out of my seat when out of nowhere comes a SEINFELD reference! And an iconic one at that! Too bad our younger viewers won't get it. BAD DRIVEWAYS!!! MESS YOU UP!!!!! 😂
Also, I think it's interesting that in Vegas, if you want to visit and take a picture of the iconic welcome sign, your destination literally IS the median!!
Hi Rob. I'm working on a project dealing with TWLTL and a ridiculous number of driveways for a corridor in Idaho, and your video pretty much summed up the issues that the area is dealing with. This is a great, GREAT explanation. I'll be forwarding this to my PM, a couple things that you mentioned would be great potential implementations
Did I just hear "your grandma loves Nickelback"?
Road Guy Bob actually make me understand more than what my lecturer taught me back in college
th-cam.com/video/ORzNZUeUHAM/w-d-xo.html
This is gold. As a civil engineering student with a city planning-geography minor, I see the mobility and accessibility paradigms discussed in differently in each class. Civils only seem to care about mobility! This is a perfect description of why we must consider both. Add in more on walkability and we are talking true planning for sustainable communities.
Thank you for also addressing the distress and frustration we have with roads that are neither type 1 or 2, but that we must figure out what to do with what we already have.
You’re the best, Rob.
That's until you run into a developer that doesn't want to spend a dime.
th-cam.com/video/ORzNZUeUHAM/w-d-xo.html
The most important words they do not teach is right of way. You can only build in what you own. This is why when you start working in the field you will find out that no one wants to sell their land so 1 bike a day can have a 5 foot bike lane.
@@subicstationditosailor4053 if you have a bad bike that no one uses it leads nowhere or it is bad
There's a really simple solution.
Stop making roads with more then one lane in each direction that you can turn on and of.
There should be three tiers of roads.
Roads that you drive slowly on when you arrive at your destination that's supposed to make you uncomfortable with driving fast, high trees, few lanes, speed bumps etc, this is for when you drive close to a store or private home or whatever.
These should be focused 100% on the pedestrians and safety, flow of traffic, speed etc should be discouraged.
And ideally each lot next to these roads should be small so more companies or home owners can use the same stretch of road.
There might be small parking lots along the side of the road, but ideally no space wasted on huge separate parking lots.
Then there's the higher end roads that take you between cities or otherwise over long distances where you drive on ramps on and off lanes going of the road with no crossing traffic at all, separation between the lanes etc.
This is where the focus is on speed and efficiency, pedestrians are off limits from here.
Then there's the in between solution where every single turn should have a traffic light, these should still be closer to the slow roads then the fast ones, but they have to allow for more volume.
There's no turning directly from these into any parking lots or anything of that kind, but they might be wide enough for public transportation for instance.
These roads are meant to take you from the fast long distance ones to the slow ones, they're not meant to actually support cars driving off and parking or entering into or leaving the traffic unregulated.
The beginning and end of these roads are usually good places for roundabouts.
I guess putting in a median might force businesses to adapt their access arrangements. Instead of a strip of individual parking lots, maybe they can share one long one, with a signalised access point in the middle. This isn't uncommon in the UK, retail parks are designed around a central car park that all the smaller units share (a big unit might have its own).
And you have invented the strip mall / box store.
They are much better than a basic stroad but if you really need more than 2 lanes + turn lane then you should find an alternative to more lanes. AKA transit or multiuse paths.
@@jasonreed7522 Transit may not solve the issue if most of the traffic isn't local.
I'm going to name my first child Rob in honor of this channel!!!
Rob is the best name in the whole world.
I guess you will teach your child to be a bank robber.
Rob, I've been watching your videos for a while, now. I really appreciate how you help us understand how things got to be the way they are on public right-of-ways. There's something I notice you rarely, if ever, mention, though. The drivers, themselves. In my opinion, if more drivers would actually follow the rules of the road, be courteous and a little empathetic that we all just want to get where we're going without dying, and pay attention to what they're doing, then I think civil engineers and governments would not have to work so hard and spend so much money on designing roads that limit our ability to harm ourselves and others.
Im 33 and I've been driving since I was 16, I have honestly never ever heard it called a suicide lane until right this minute.
Might be a locality thing, here we call them a chicken lane. Because going down them can be a game of chicken 😂
I've never heard of turn lanes. Pretty sure they don't exist in the UK
It's a regional term.
Their ancestral function was as a passing lane permitted from _both_ directions. That function was eventually dropped and limited to starting/completing a far side turn, but for some places and generations of drivers the name stuck.
Nice job Rob. Illustrating the conflict points was great. I have a suggestion for a video topic. Try explaining the left turn yellow trap and variations in traffic signal phasing to help address the issue. The yellow trap even turns up during emergency vehicle preemption.
9:57 they desperately need that at the corner of La Cienega and Centinela in LA. They put a Chicfila at that corner and it’s absolutely destroyed the traffic
They need to put Chic-fil-A’s BACK inside of the shopping malls they were literally born from or other buildings with all the parking/lounging space inside & out...
Watching traffic volumes in a CFA drive thru grow over 5 years after said location opened has to be the equivalent of watching a once rural 4 lane interstate bypass grow to an 8-10 lane dense suburban flustercluck within 30-40 years...
Bro, that's everywhere that has an independent Chic-fil-A restaurant. Every one I see has roughly about 2,000 customers during rush hour alone. It's amazing but ridiculous.
I'm from Detroit, and it's super common to have medians on all our highways, and on top of that, on our medians we have very few left turn capabilities. Most require you to catch a u-turn and then turn right. They really aren't bad. Seems like we have more accidents from cars pulling in and out of side streets.
Not just highways. Tons of surface streets in Michigan are boulevards. There are so many here you don't realize it.
These are fine if the median is wide, but, and I mean this incredibly deeply, THE MEDIAN HAS TO BE WIDE!!
13:04 Nuke the entire site from orbit--it's the only way to be sure.
"Road Guy Rob" is so awesome, I love his videos, and he's so good at presenting. The man is one of the best News presenters out there, he's got such a good voice to explain things like he does.
Rob, if you're reading this, have an awesome day, bud! Thanks for what you do!
Love your videos! It's really interesting watching your videos as someone who's not in the US. There doesn't seem to be many roundabouts
They've only become popular in the past 20 years or so, so they haven't had quite enough time to become widespread. That said, here in MN they're really going for it with roundabouts
5:20 in the video. So glad you used Clarksville, TN as an example (I live just one county south of there!) Wilma Rudolph Blvd. is the WORST stretch of road ever. Turning out of any business or restaurant is a nightmare!
2:27 "Your grandma likes Nickleback!!!" Funniest thing I have heard on TH-cam in years. Certainly the funniest in a tragic control video! Keep up the extraordinary work, Rob.
I'd love to get rid of the 5 lane road (2 each way with a suicide lane) near my house. Used to be one each way with a double track street car but that was replaced with a bus. Maybe 2 each way with a median and a protected bike lane would be better.
Your grandma likes Nickleback! 🤣😂🤣
🤪👹
Production quality way up. Nice work man!
Man your videos are the BEST. Never stop making content!
My city has a suicide lane in front of the drive testing centre, and they often make people turn left there. My exam was the last time I used these when leaving somewhere. I always turn right when leaving most businesses and figure my way back through GPS or turn onto a side street and come back at a set of lights. I don’t care.
Well you definitely aren't a rideshare/food delivery driver if that's how you drive.
@@bftjoe yep. I’m not. And I can take the extra minute or so at the expense of my peace of mind.
"Suicide Lane" is the nickname. He can't say it or put it in the description b/c of the risk of demonetization, but the comments are lawless
Until the algorithm decides to censor your comment 🤬😡🤬😡🤬
That nickname originated with rural 3 lane roads with 60 mph speed limits, where the middle lane was open to passing from both directions at the same time. It really was a game of chicken. I wasn't yet a teenager when I experienced these from the backseat. In the 60s and maybe a bit later, they changing the striping so that only one direction was allowed into the middle lane at a time, while traffic in the other direction was stuck behind the truck or RV until it was their turn to use the turning lane. In a sense, the construction of interstates pulled enough traffic away from the rural highways that allowed reducing passing opportunities. Low speed turning lanes vaguely resembled the early, more dangerous roads, and acquired the old nickname from people who used the originals.
@@johnhaller5851 Thanks for the extra info! Those suicide lanes with traffic going 60 mph head-on sounds scary.
Love your videos! I'm always excited when I see you uploaded a video
Awesome video. It is always good to see both pros an cons of a given traffic design.
Nice Video, less than a week after Not Just Bikes' video about suicide lanes... Both very informative!
Don’t know if you’ve done this but check out Michigan we have a ton a ton of roads where there’s a median and what we call a Michigan Left! It’s very interesting how we developed our roads differently since the car came from here
This channel needs more subscribers. Honestly, this has been the kind of channel I've been looking for to discuss transportation development from a shitpost aspect. 👍
Love your videos Rob. Keep up the good work!
“The concept of Yin and Yang becomes interesting when applied to the middle of the road.”
6:18 Man these videos are so underrated 🤣
So informative, educational, and yet hilarious as well. Much love!
Rob, you might appreciate StrongTown's analysis of the "stroad".
Roads are for mobility between places that create value.
Streets are for access to places that create value.
Stroads do both poorly and unsafely.
*Streets* are for access to places that create value 🙂
@@edwardmiessner6502 Fixed. How did I mess up THAT badly?
In my country ”Egypt”, raised medians are EVERYWHERE and people are just forced to use them whether good or not
"Use them"?
I would love to hear how Egypt compares to this.
Rob like always your work is amazing. Thank you for all your work!
My day gets a bit better when I see you posted a new video
i have never heard them called that before. they are actively being added to roads across the north east
It seems like a lot of the problem is centered around singular buildings with parking lots that you drive to. Is there a better alternative for low density/suburban city design? Something where you drive to a general "hotspot" of locations, and then walk to the final destination? I guess I'm just thinking of a strip mall.
Most of our dumbasses won't accept anything besides free, plentiful parking directly in front of our destinations no matter the personal and societal cost. It's utterly retarded.
In general low density/suburban would normally be an extremely tiny part of the city where the ultra wealthy live. The rest of the people would live in middle density, with a bit higher density in the city center. I remember seeing footage from Americans talking about a city in Florida and was like wtf... that's less densely populated than rural villages where i live. Single story houses with huge yards.
I do like the TWLTL. What makes it dangerous are those who use it as an extra lane during heavy traffic and or not signaling properly.
Great content!
Great video :D
As a British person, it always takes me a moment to remember the video is right hand drive XD
It’s actually right-hand traffic. “Drive” refers to the steering wheel here (and we’re left hand drive).
If you turn those raised medians at the intersections into islands, it can really help pedestrians.
No one walks in the US anyway
Either build proper save roads or keep driving
th-cam.com/video/LSnSeyG74fw/w-d-xo.html
@@burgerpommes2001 The picture where it was shown appears to have sidewalks, possible pedestrian crossings and what looks like it could well be a pedestrian. If you're going to design for a usage, may as well do it properly.
@@burgerpommes2001 Hahahahah people who can't drive don't exist! 14-year-olds can drive, blind people can drive, people who can't focus on a single goddamn thing for the life of them can drive! There's not a single thing in the entire world that could *possibly* prevent someone from safely operating a 2-ton machine capable of traveling in excess of 100 miles per hour! (Ahem, SARCASM!)
@@hauntedshadowslegacy2826 I personally would choose the save Dutch road but there is more to it than pedestrian islands
I was expecting the term "Stroad" to show up, but it didn't :(
One thing you didn't mention for fixing this issue: shared parking lots. A lot of localities don't require businesses to share their parking lot, which ofc means the businesses...don't. This means you can have two or three businesses literally next to each other, but each one will have its own parking lot with its own driveway. That's 3 driveways!
If the local gov passed a law requiring that they merge their parking lots you could decrease that to 1 driveway, decreasing the number of places ppl need to make left turns to.
I never heard of road with turning lane being called “suicide lane” until I moved to Phoenix and heard the term in reference to center lane on certain streets where in morning the turning lane has no left turns except at lights and one way heading to city, and in evening one way coming away from city and no left turns except at lights. Outside those two rush hours it is only for left turns.
The old usage of "suicide lane" was a middle lane on a three lane road, which could be used for overtaking by either direction. Not the same as a turning lane. Needless to say, due to the many head-on collisions (especially at curves), they were gotten rid of by the 1940s.
this guy`s video editing style is second to none absolutely hilarious I love it!
so wait a second, I as a European am confused, in the US you can make a left turn and cross the continuous yellow lines? isn't that illegal? (in Europe is a major offense to cross a continuous line, and it's almost jail offense to cross a double line)
Turns across a double-solid are generally not allowed, although this is never enforced. With a dashed on your side (no center lane, passing zone on your side), left turns are generally allowed. With a center turn lane, left turns are generally required to be made from the center lane (although not when it becomes a dedicated turn lane for the other side, denoted by the single-dashed, single-solid line changing to a double solid)
"We like the old way even though its a disaster" should be the motto of conservatism (as in the philosophy who aims to preserve things whether they make sense or not) and "We like the new way even though its a disaster" should be the corresponding motto of progressivism (as in the philosophy who prefers anything new whether it makes sense or not). Good thing neither of those are too prevalent even among the less rational people in politics.
As I like to say: "Progressives are there to rock the boat. Conservatives are there to stop it capsizing." That's how the two sides _should_ work.
Thanks Road Guy Rob! Excited for the median video!
Loved this video and great information. The city next door to mine where my gym and entertainment stuff is about 2 to 3 years ago got rid of the 2 way left turn lane and put in a raised median with controlled U-Turns. It's worked incredibly well for the city and although it by itself isn't a large population, the metro area for it, makes the county its in, the 17th most popular in the state out of 88 counties. It's a business road with all the driveways you mentioned.
I've never heared of such a lane before so it seems unique to the United States. At least here in Germany they don't exist and I haven't noticed any in Switzerland or Italy. Dedicating a whole lane just so that people can get on and off of it seems to be a bit of a waste for single lane roads and having this with multi lane roads seems too dangerous to me at a first glance.
The ideal use case is that when your basic 2 lane stroad is getting crowded adding a single turning lane in the middle frees up all the slowdowns and conflicts of a left turning vehicle in a normal travel lane.
Ideally you would actually separate out roads (a fast path for getting from point A to B) and streets (a destination with a million conflict points that keep you going slow and also is a place pedestrians would want to be) the way the Netherlands has made it so the all roads must be classified as a highway, roads, or street.
America just ended up building a bunch of stroads which try to do both but fail at ot because it isn't conducive to traveling quickly and it isn't safe to actually make a stop at your destination. The fact he praised the Vegas Strip shows he didn't learn the leason of the video, that place is 2 sidewalks with a canyon of death between them and the occasional and inconvenient bridge over it. (Cars are a means of transport, places should be designed for people and not just 1 mode of transport)
There's a reason they're nicknamed suicide lanes
Well, the problem is probably also that every warrant seems to be a SWAT situation nowadays.
I'm sorry....this has *_what_* to do with left turn lanes?
Another common use not mentioned is a pausing lane when making a left turn a driveway onto a 5 lane road (4+TWLTL), the TWLTL gives a place to pause so one can cross the first two lanes when clear and pull into the TWLTL then wait for an opening to enter the travel lane.
A similar concept is the Spanish filter lane (this is what it is called in Europe outside Spain, since it is so popular in Spain). When doing a left turn from a minor road or driveway, you wait for a gap to cross the first two lanes, then use the Spanish filter lane to accelerate to the speed of traffic flow and finally merge into traffic from the left.
Great video Rob. One of your best
What we’re talking about here is what Strong Towns refers to as a “stroad.”
You said, “what do we do about roads that have to do both?” in reference to getting people from point A to B and also creating viable streetlife. That is precisely what defines a stroad: not a street, not a road, a hybrid of both.