“Together we’re advancing initiatives focused on creating safer, more efficient travel options for all modes of transportation, from vehicles to bicycles to pedestrians,” Dave Ambuehl, the chief deputy district director of Caltrans, said in a news release.
https://www.sfgate.com/travel/article/new-intersection-project-first-kind-bay-area-19901199.php
Jesus Christ that’s a fucking recipe for collisions.
I think you aren’t particularly familiar with how drivers treat traffic lights on multi-land thoroughfares.
And that intersection is setting up collisions to primarily be head on.
That’s just your status quo bias.
This video explains how it’s remarkably better.
This is a meat grinder for cyclists.
Those aren’t bicycle lanes, they’re clear zones to protect drivers so they won’t hit a tree or a pole and ding their $100k truck.
All that could happen is that they kill a bicyclist and drag them for a few hundred feet, but that washes off.
If the truck on the bottom right made a right turn instead of going straight, it would cross a cycle lane.
But that right turn would mean driving in the wrong direction. See the arrows? Diverging diamond intersections Force traffic to drive on the left side of the road instead of the right.
No, there are 2 spots where cars turning right cross a cycle lane going straight, without a traffic light.
One of them is on the lakes coming from the left, the other on the lanes in the background coming towards the viewer.
Theres a rule that no one follows on the roads, when turning right (or left for that matter) you come to a complete stop and then proceed. This applies even if there is no stop sign or the light is solid green.
The only exception to this is if your signal light shows a green arrow pointing right, or left.
The location in the image pointed out above tells motorists they can proceeded at full speed, run over the pedestrian at the crossing, run over the cyclists (that has the right of way), and drive head first into traffic in a effort to murge as quickly as possible.
There should (at the minimum) be painted yeild the right of way marking on the road. Both before the pedestrians crossing at the off ramp and right before the bike lane crossing, which should be painted continuously.
Kind of like this.
Though paint is no substitute for proper roadway design.
Not this one:
Edit: who the heck wants to walk on the shoulder of a gigantic road like that too… wtf
It is. There are traffic lights in front of the crossing for pedestrians and the bicycle lane is parallel to the car lane and logically both of the can only have a green light if the cars from the left have a red light and also the pedestrian have a green light for crossing.
This is actually one of the most efficient compact interchange designs though. It integrates way more elegantly with accessory roads without creating huge dead zones.
I support a car ban, but these are actually very well designed.
Theyre extremely car-centric, space-inefficient, wildly expensive, and don’t do anything to solve traffic.
These are legitimately some of the only interchange designs which integrate nicely with pedestrian paths and bike lanes.
I’m not sure if there’s any safe way to have level crossings for bicycles and pedestrians across highway ramps. The safe ones are almost always underpasses or overpasses. There’s a bicycle path in Stockholm at the end of a highway ramp as it merges onto a 50 km/h road, and I’m terrified to use it.
I have no clue how you are getting down voted in a fuckcars community for pointing out this infrastructure is still car centric and does nothing to solve traffic, only induce demand.
If this area was designed for people only it would not look like this.
This is still city planners creating a dangerous strode and intersecting it with a interstate highway and calling it good enough.
None of which are problems they’re actually trying to tackle.
They improve traffic a bit (not solve), and are substantially safer. They’re only meant to do those 2 things, and they’re good at it. Nobody thinks a single intersection idea will fix transportation as we know it.
Together we’re advancing initiatives focused on creating safer, more efficient travel options for all modes of transportation, from vehicles to bicycles to pedestrians
They spent $25M not making travel safer for bicycles and pedestrians, and explicitly making travel less efficient by inducing car demand. $25M could buy Caltrans an entire set of one of their new Stadler kiss trains, to go from 24 trains sets to 25.
edit: Actually this intersection is more dangerous than the existing intersection. It doubles the amount of pedestrian signals that pedestrians have to cross, and eliminates the sidewalk on the east side. Plus, they’re cutting down like 8 trees and not replacing them. This is urban decay.
I explicitly said I’m anti-car (read: I’m aware they’re car-centric). The rest of this is either outright false, or isn’t solved more effectively by any car-centric alternative.
Diverging diamonds are among the best interchanges in existence. That doesn’t mean they’re great, but they solve far more problems than they introduce.
Please direct your weapons where they actually matter–asphalt itself.
It just seems strange to portray highway interchanges in a positive light. Like, they might be the safest interchange for stroads intersecting an interstate, but that’s kinda like putting a $25M bandaid on a bullet wound.
they solve far more problems than they introduce.
It is worse for pedestrians, who now have twice as many traffic signals to wait for. It is worse for cyclists, with “gauntlet” bike lanes running between through- and right-turning lane. It is only better for cars…so hardly the “best” interchange in existence.
…but why
