Monday, January 28, 2013

"I Know Engineers...They Love to Change Things"

English: A diagram of a diverging diamond inte...
English: A diagram of a diverging diamond interchange, showing how the traffic flows. Apparently, the Dept. of Transportation in the state of Missouri had too much money this year and hired some kids to do the drawings. If people would simply pay attention to their driving, instead of treating their vehicle like a phone booth/restaurant, ridiculous designs like this wouldn't be part of today's roads Svenska: En bild på en divergernade diamantkorsning som visar hur tafiken rör sig. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
For those too young to remember the quote from the title of this entry, it is from Star Trek: The Motion Picture and from Dr. McCoy and I thought it was perfect for this entry.

I came across the video below on the Portland Transport site and thought it was something that had to be shared. The Utah Department of Transportation installed one of these intersections at 2100 South Expressway and Bangerter Highway in West Valley.

The diagram on the right gives you the basics of what these types of intersections are supposed to do. I have to say the first time I approached the one on Bangerter Highway it was really confusing especially since it was dark and snowing at the time.

There was also several drivers almost taken out at the intersection by a semi that seemed to be even more confused that the average driver over how to drive this thing.

While the one in the video has "token" pedestrian and cycling access the Utah one does not but then again Bangerter and the 2100 South Expressway is not designed for pedestrians.



Besides this diverging diamond intersection, UDOT has also been busy turning traffic lanes on 5400 South into reversible lanes. In addition they also did a continuous flow intersection treatment at Redwood and 5400 South that I will discuss in the future.
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2 comments:

william said...

Wow, this is surely a masterpiece by engineers, they did good job with giving it shape of diamond and then managing the traffic. Thank yo ufor sharing it

lost_in_woods said...

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