Don't want to sound like a smartass, but wouldn't a large enough two lane roundabout do just fine? No phases at all, less electricity bills (only for street lamps, no traffic signals), less stopping so consequently less CO2 and less fuel consumption etc. Plus it allows pedestrians to cross safely, as roundabouts slow the flow, and that even rhymes, wow. Conclusion: roundabouts are awesome. Right?
@@coltonkinsey2977 hell no, where did you get that from? They cost about as much as the conventional intersections to build, and are much cheaper in the long run. You're way off buddy.
Dude your channel directly appeals to a weird nerdiness I have about traffic engineering and I'm so thankful I found it. I'm literally a doctor in training lmao.
I was there when the first CFI was opened to traffic in GA (GA 53 vs GA 400) in 2018. People were hella confused. You can hear profanity and people yelling "this aint gonna work" "this sucks" etc lol One downside of the CFI is corner business could be decimated due to loss of traffic. The Shell gas station closed down right after. Kroger behind it also closed down.
A freeway is "free" from at-grade intersections (stop signs, traffic signals, etc.). The entire road has its grade separated (bridges, underpasses, tunnels) from cross streets and access is available only via ramps. A highway is any road that primarily serves vehicles traveling longer distances. So while all freeways are highways, not all highways are freeways. Hope I'm making sense, lol.
Why doesn't Google with all their fancy sensors, devise smart traffic lights to see the numbers of cars coming from far down the road, and adjust light timings on the fly to get the most cars through with least delay?
Aahh, the good old JerseyJug Handles...lol. Rt. 70 near Brick Township is the craziest stretch. Within 3 intersections, all different, a jug handle, circle, and something else that I don't even know the name for...lol.
@@z609gaming yes I do, right by where it intersects with 571. It's like they should have removed the traffic light and replaced it with an overpass making it a Cloverleaf interchange. I used travel through that intersection as a kid to go to the shore at Island State Park.
Across the river, PA has some Jersey-style jughandles, all on 4-lane roads. Examples include US422 in lower Berks north of Pottstown, PA309 in Montgomeryville.
Went through one of these in Utah. By, "went through", I mean that I wanted to turn left but was so confused, I ended up going straight through having to do a U-turn and right over a period of about 5 minutes and probably breaking a few laws.
@@josephj6521 Only if we replace the homes with high density housing with no parking. They don't need parks because they're in a 'high transit access area' (at least until we bulldoze the bus stop for another intersection).
When I was in Germany, in the late 1960s, they had something odd on the side of the streets in larger cities. It was an old fashion looking "Side of the street, traffic control light looking Light" like we used to have HERE in the 50s a before (when people actually PAID ATTENTION to said Lights). It had 4 lenses and each lens had a Number on it. When the number lite up, all you had to do is adjust your speed to THAT number and you would make the NEXT GREEN LIGHT. You never saw much traffic congestion and the traffic was always moving. Saved on fuel, brakes and yes, even TIME. As you didn't have to come to a complete STOP then take off again. Always wondered why they didn't do that HERE in the U.S.
And I wonder why we don't have more of these here in Germany. According to Wikipedia we have less than 20 Geschwindigkeitssignale (speed sign) installed here in Germany. I regularly drive on a road with such a system and I think it works perfectly (as long as nobody drives faster than the sign says). So I don't understand why it isn't used more often.
@@Jehty_ Here in the states, that variable sign would just say ZERO. I swear traffic control teamed up with the oil companies to try and MAXIMIZE fuel consumption. I cant tell you how many times I stopped at a red light for minutes, and NO ONE went through the green, and as soon as the cross traffic turned red and we turned green, cars would start accumulating on the cross road that was just green while we were waiting..
@@JonathanNelson-nelsonj3 The one at the beginning of the video in the time lapse was State Street and Center Street in Orem. So there's two, less than 2 miles apart.
Americans: "we have to find a way for people to turn left without many crashes... Let's make a Super intricate road!" Europeans: "...what about roundabouts?"
Roundabouts in The States are really becoming fairly common. They blew a lot of peoples minds at first, but they've adapted fairly rapidly. I've experienced a few of the intersections in this video and they DO WORK.. but are much more intricate and people don't pay enough attention to be in the correct lane upon approach for them to be so sporadically placed.
In most areas of the US anything heavier than neighborhood traffic comes to a 3-way standstill in a roundabout and they greatly increase accidents because most US drivers aren't familiar with them
There's actually a roundabout just off camera to the left! They're unfamiliar to most drivers in the US. The cameraman is standing in behind the largest university in Utah. Very few people know how to drive in them properly, and the traffic in the surrounding area is too heavy for proper enforcement (or teaching). Two: roundabouts are often known as a traffic calming device, because they force traffic to slow down. This doesn't work well in places like Utah where snow plows require a certain amount of momentum to do their job properly.
@@osco4311 the whole slowing of traffic is crap doesn't stop the plows in northern Europe: Sweden Finland etc. That all have very snowy winters and require the road closing. Roundabouts literally would solve this issue and more
UDOT loves to try out new ways of frustrating drivers. We have the CFI’s, Diverging Diamond’s, FLEX lane’s and the absolute worst is this left hand turn light that actually happens after the intersection. UDOT since this video has removed an additional 5 CFI’s along the Bangerter Highway and have since converted them to freeway interchanges. Makes driving that highway much nicer. The issue with the CFI’s is remembering that you shift over much earlier to make a left turn and sometimes you forget and miss the turn. Well, guess there is also another issue of people still going to the light and still try to turn left holding up the through traffic.
Getting a driver's license is too easy in America. It should be a hard test where you must get all the questions right. A hard question could be the difference between a life saved.
In Germany we have something called "Right-hand drive bid" [Rechtsfahrgebot] which applies especially to our Autobahn. (Highway) This rule ensures that overtaking is only legal from the left side and that slow vehicles have to take the lanes on the right side. I have seen a lot of dashcam footage with accidents that would have been prevented by this rule.
I was about to say, just replace everything with roundabouts, and im from America But we are still figuring them out. People think either A) always _stop_ before you enter a roundabout, even if its empty, or B) you always enter at _full speed_ even if the roundabout is full
@@jeremywoods770 not even sure why it's that difficult. Yield means yield to existing traffic. If no traffic, you have nothing to yield to so you just... Go. Then again this is the same country that can't seem to figure out how to merge into a freeway. Most seem to think you're supposed to match up with a random driver in the right lane and play a game of chicken with them.
@@alexmawdsley Bold of you to assume people know how to drive :P Yeah I see the chicken thing everywhere. In my city there are two or three roundabouts and I see one every day where I run. I see absolutely pants-on-head retarded operation by at least one car there every single day, and I'm only looking at it for a minute or so. People waiting for cars on the other side of the roundabout to come all the way around/exit the roundabout are the biggest problem. If the car's not near you you *cannot* physically hit it, simple physics, just go, just drive!
They stopped saying most of the names and if a highway number is available. It sucks, because nobody knows where Hwy 154 (Bangerter) is, and definitely not Hwy 85 (Mountain View Corridor).
The "long term" strategy to these is kind of clever in a way. In the example you gave they had already purchased the right of way for the planned future freeway, so maximizing that footprint without building a grade separated interchange increases the value of that investment while waiting to finish a future phase of development. Also the increased pre-existing road surface seems like it would make construction phasing safer and more efficient when you do upgrade eventually.
As someone from the Netherlands, its really interesting to see road engineering in the US. This is a very clever solution to keep CARS moving. However, wouldn't it be more effective to invest that money and engineering time into providing options for people to walk, cycle or use public transport? Instead of building roads to deal with endlessly increasing demand, off load some of that car demand to other means of transport. I find it funny that pedestrians were mentioned once, with no real alternatives except for an expensive tunnel that I'm sure most of these intersetions won't have. I didn't see a single cyclist or form of public transport. No wonder traffic sucks in the US.
[sarcastic answer] Well, yeah, but This Is America! and it would be Un-American do do anything that might upset or harm our oil-company overlords! [end sarcasm] Honestly, most newer cities and pretty much all suburbs (where most Americans live) were designed from the ground up to be car-centric and car dependent. Social prestige is often affected by how car-dependent your neighborhood is (how big is your yard? how hard is it for "The Poors" to get to?) To make US suburbs walk/cyclable, you'd have to convince people to give up land for paths and lanes for bicycles (and protection curbs), convince people that maybe they don't really *need* that much lawn, and maybe there could be more housing instead. Convince people that poverty is not a personal moral failure (that's the hard part). It would be easier to level it all and restart from scratch. In the place where I grew up, cars were so necessary for living that the concept of not having one was utterly unthinkable. Not having even the crappiest most beat up car meant you were the poorest of the poor, and in America, that is a Sin. The importance of cars is baked into American culture and, though we're making tiny inroads on changing that, will take a lot more than a couple of pedestrian-aware intersections to fix. Pardon the rant, but "wouldn't it be more effective" makes it sound a lot simpler than it is.
The US is a big country and unless you live in a metro area and only travel within the metro area you'll need a car if you want to do what you want to do and not just wherever the bus happens to go at certain times. State of Utah alone is over 5 times larger than your home country, some people's commutes each day is measured in hours not minutes so having your own vehicle is a must if you want to have a decent job. Not to mention the time and cost of building infrastructure over a big country, not every place is going to be great and everyone learns how to deal with it and get on with their day.
@@s0nnyburnett I never said get rid of cars lol, plenty of Dutch people drive to work because its the best option. My point is that there should be more options, and even in the US, a lot of car journeys are short and in built up areas where other transportation options are possible. In the country side, of course, use a car, we do that too.
Those pedestrian tunnels must be scary. Seems like a place where people frequently would get robbed or assaulted. I think I would rather dodge the cars.
Who wants to spend hours lining up and waiting at the side of the road just to get on a Coronawagon? Public transport use in my region has stabilized at 40% of traditional level for the past year. The "change" that has occurred is that people have realized that taking the bus is inconvenient and disease-ridden. I will ride in the comfort and safety of my personal automobile and go where I want, when I want.
I LOVE the CFI in Cities Skylines. The improvement over a conventional intersection is dramatic, and watching it work is like art. I didn't think I'd like it even better than the diverging diamond interchange, but I do. It is THE highest capacity level intersection, and so much less disruptive than a grade-separated highway interchange.
@blackhole4106 At the levels of traffic where a CFI is needed, nothing short of a highway interchange does that. If a roundabout hits capacity, people have to stop and wait too.
In the UK we wouldn’t even attempt to find a “one size fits all” solution. You just build whatever intersection suits the circumstances and people just deal with it. (Well mostly).
Yes and because of the ''non standard'' aproach you have no idea what lanes you can use for forward unless you have clear markings and signage. Lack of road markings and random unnecessary logic are the reason for plenty of near misses and accidents that could simply be avoided by a bit more standardisation and leaving only the more complicated situations as ''exceptions''...
Ran into one of these outside Cincinnati, I'm sure it's great if you know about it, I definitely missed my turn when I used it cuz I knew my left turn wasn't until the next intersection but didn't realize I had to cross at the previous one.
@@madmonkey8141 from what I find online the 2 roundabouts were always meant to be an interim measure. Looking at the aerial photos of them, they are quite small compared to the ones we use in the UK. In fact they are on par with the ones we use to get into a supermarket and don't look fit for purpose for a busy intersection. Although I agree with you in principle with your particular example, a big 3 lane roundabout at the junction in the video would work better than the way it is currently. You could also use traffic lights on the roundabout during rush hour, again fairly common here.
I was thinking that too. But Americans aren't well constitutionally suited to big roundabouts. Each driver thinks the whole thing is theirs. Drivers in roundabouts have to be willing to work together.
That spot already has a bridge taking traffic over the highway below. He said that the diverging system he talked about was used only to allow the state to save money to build a bridge which is a more permanent solution.
There’s a 1/2 one (it’s a normal intersection on one side, this on the super busy side intersecting it) on SR82 just outside Ft. Myers, and it has made a huge difference! It looked crazy, but when the traffic to turn right backs up the 4 lane road for a mile at least twice a day, and the highway is getting widened, why not, right? Awesome. There is a ton of farm traffic that comes north on SR 82 from Immokalllee, semis filled with produce from the tomato, bell pepper, and fruit farms, and of course the citrus groves, and it is dangerous as all get out. Mix it with a large suburb (Lehigh) with underdeveloped infrastructure, and you can imagine that it’s a mess. That intersection is one of the 2 main ways to get into Lehigh from Ft. Myers, I-75, Cape Coral, etc., so it sees pretty heavy traffic and was a great place to try it out. It takes twice the space, but traffic flows a million times better. Thank goodness, because a new high school opens up next year not far from it, lol! Good luck and hopefully the planners in Miami-Dade will be able to sell the idea on your side of the state!
Great videos, Rob! Your explanations and visuals are incredibly helpful and easy to understand. I also want to mention - thank you for your Lexus video. I have a base 1991 LS that is very similar to yours - no sunroof and cloth interior. However, I did get the keyless entry and mudguard options. I didn't even know keyless wasn't standard, until I saw yours! Keep up the great videos!
I go through this intersection a lot. It made a huge difference in how long it takes to get through that very busy intersection. I love the new design. Very smooth and efficient.
The intersection shown there isn't really in what'd I'd describe as "countryside" - it's right next to a university campus so the land was probably pretty expensive.
Austin liberal commies using socialist engineering! Jk 😋 we have a couple here in Georgetown Tx and boy it works! Kinda confusing but you get used to it 😁
Hey Rob, I am a big fan of your videos. The way you present information is extremely entertaining and informative. It would be really interesting if you could do a video on 4-way stops. It seems like no one actually knows how to use them properly. The city that I live in has also started replacing some of them with roundabouts. I'd be interested to hear what you think of 4-way stops, if they are the most effective solution, and if traffic lights or roundabouts are better options.
We have several 4 way stops where I live and a few are high traffic-ish. They work great. You get to go when it is your turn. I sit at a 4 way stop 30 seconds tops. A light cycle 2 minutes.
Excellent videos, Rob. Subscribed when i saw your first one. The big drawback of cfi is the space it will take. In my opinion, when the space is tight and traffic is heavy, the best way is to have each direction have its time, with smart use of right- and left- turns in other directions so the use of common area is maximized.
My city opened one up there I live at an intersection that was always congested and the traffic would run back forever up and down the road. Once the intersection went in, the entire highway cleared up. It was like magic.
That intersection doesn't work well for me, there have been times where cars cross in a yellow light and get stuck in that intersection during a red light. My solution is to make a left turn a block before and go the long to get to that shopping center there, I have noticed that over time more cars doing the same thing, I got that idea from public transportation, the local bus does that.
My favorite unique road intersection is where you can take an exit and then rejoin the express lanes at the the light and beat a line of cars. Palatine Rd.
I've actually seen it over a number of interchanges and some high-traffic exits in the LA/OC area, especially near Disneyland. It seems to be spreading as they work on other areas, as well.
We have one of these here in Michigan too. (@Joslyn & Brown roads) Except, it was put in a rich area where there ISN'T any foot traffic. And second, it was put in BEFORE traffic got too high instead of waiting until traffic became a problem! Two roads cross in a plus, Northerly roads have a slip lane to turn right, no waiting. West bound traffic can turn left early and fill up a slip lane next to the first one. Enough people understand the concept that even if you DON'T, you can just follow the car in front of you and be okay. One road has on-ramps to a freeway on it, the other is lined with stores (Sam's Club, Aldi, Kohl's, Kroger, etc.) so different speeds, different car volumes. It works just fine, but signage and lane markings are CRUCIAL!! Most people ARE stup!d. But given time, they CAN understand things that are NEW to them! Round-a-bouts, diverging diamonds, "continuous flow intersections", etc. Makes a LOT more sense than having EMPTY HOV lanes during RUSH HOUR!! How about we focus on teaching slow drivers to stay OUT of the PASSING LANE?!?
My gosh.... So their ARE brain waves being used by the 20-30+ people standing around a road construction site with hard hats on, leaning on shovels, doing nothing except watching one person in a backhoe for days at a time.
This came up on my feed and I knew instantly I'm gonna like this channel. And as an European my obligation is to bring up roundabouts! Safe and affordable!
The road I live on has 6 consecutive single-lane roundabouts. It's probably an artifact of bad city planning given how extremely close they are, but they work very efficiently.
Also as an European I have to add the fact that city planning can also be made without giving cars the priority. European suburbs are much denser and thus have more potential to get public transport such as trains, and local walkable surroundings with cafes and shops. Of course European suburbs are car-dependent on many cases at least on the outer edges of the city, but the street network is planned to serve both pedestrians and cars.
Roundabouts are coming to the US. Around here they're building a ton of them on country roads where cars don't feel like yielding to traffic. But I also see them being built near freeway on/off ramps and in spaces where they have multiple roads intersecting and have the space to put in a roundabout rather than a light.
I live in Canada and they are just about to open the first ever displaced left turn in the country in my hometown. I personally think it'll be a lot better than the conventional intersection however a lot of people are freaking out over it and saying they're going to just completely avoid it. Hopefully, once it opens, they see it's really not that hard to navigate and the only difference is the left turn.
We have one in baton rouge louisiana and i never knew what they were called until now. You would never know how good it is until you have one it helps traffic sooooooooooo much. The 50% of the time having green is pretty accurate the traffic flows so well.
I'd love to see you do a video about the benefits of electric / hybrid cars! I dont know if its in your wheelhouse, but I think you could have an interesting take on it
There are none... The batteries and other tech in the cars are MAJOR polluters and those cars are COAL powered for the most part or fossil fuels. Now if CA wanted to put in a bunch of Thorium Salt reactors to make electricity, then we are talking about a long term sustainable power source. Much more Thorium than Uranium and you cannot turn the leftovers into bombs. But they could be used for Nuclear batteries for communications devices on mountain tops and other remote places as they cool off. The waste from Thorium is much less hazardous than standard Uranium reactors.
Doing this at a smaller, 2 lane scale also has its benefits. Especially for those making left and right turns. I just cant help but feel like its an optimal solution in almost all cases...
@@HelloKittyFanMan. Firstly, it would be much easier as you wouldn't have to build and maintain the signaling. Second, a roundabout would use less tarmac, leaving more for trees and grass and other things that help with flooding. Thirdly, it'd simply be safer. I don't trust American drivers, not even with a CFI. Forthly, I don't have exact numbers, but it looks like it only needs a four lane road. About say 100m before you'd make it six lanes and use the outer for the slip-lane, giving plenty of time to merge on or off. Oh and fifthly I'd give better fuel economy, so would be easier to drive through in that way.
@@mathiastwp: There's nothing about American drivers -- at least those of us in the US -- that makes us any worse, generally, than those in other continents. You should see Practical Engineering's video about how expensive they are to build, even with the signals considered. We may not have the budget for one this big in this city or state yet. It may actually be _too much_ hassle right there just before the freeway. Tarmacs are just in airports.
Problems: 1. We're actually _not_ European, and 2. that would probably be too expensive for this size of street and our state, or too much hassle to go around in right there on our way to the freeway which is just barely past that.
@@HelloKittyFanMan. Yes, we know you're not European, because you drive cars big enough to have a grizzly bear behind the steering wheel. Point is, a roundabout or turbo roundabout is definitely cheaper than some convoluted traffic light system. It depends, of course, on how many lanes of traffic you have, but more than two lanes in either direction should not have a single-level intersection.
@@SeverityOne: Why do you bring up the size of _some_ of our vehicles, as if that should make any difference (like you don't have any over there)? And what do you mean by "a roundabout or a turbo roundabout," as if turbo roundabouts aren't already roundabouts despite the word "roundabout" in their term? Look at the number of lanes on our road right here in the video then. It was my understanding that a roundabout that size could be prohibitively expensive, at least for our city or state. And many more people head to the freeway from this side than from the west side of the city, so they probably are glad that they don't have to be bothered with hooking into and out of a big circle every time they just want to go to the freeway entrances, which are just the next block.
@@HelloKittyFanMan. I didn't say "as a European", that was "nerdegem". And indeed, nobody over here drives such big cars as they do in North America. The roads simply aren't big enough. A turbo roundabout is indeed a roundabout, but a more efficient one. It has a greater capacity than a normal roundabout, but like a roundabout, it has a certain limit to its capacity. Point is, a roundabout (and especially a turbo roundabout) has a greater capacity than a traditional intersection, with or without traffic lights. I've never quite understood the American aversion to roundabouts. They weren't a thing when I was young (let's say the 1970s, early 1980s) but now you find them everywhere. The other Europeans looked at what the British were doing and figured "yeah, that makes sense".
@@SeverityOne: Oops, I lost track of which people were saying what, LOL; sorry! Anyway... I bet there are some people over there at least some places in your continent with things like a Ford Excursion or a Chevy Suburban. Maybe not many, though. You're still not making sense with your " 'turbo roundabout' vs. 'roundabout' " logic. It's as if you don't think the differentiation words "standard" and "regular" don't exist, so you say "but like a roundabout" as if the other option wasn't also one. You did use the word "normal," though; however, you didn't perpetuate that. The comparison only makes sense if you continue to use a word like that to separate the two. Roundabouts "weren't a thing" when you were young? Oh? When were they invented, according to you? The encyclopedia says the term was coined in 1960 and the first standardized one in the UK was installed in 1966. And maybe they existed even before the 60s under a different term, but I can't find anything "concrete" until 1960. So obviously they existed before you were born. I don't know about the Latin countries or Canada, but at least here in the U.S. part of the continents, I'm not sure why people claim we've had an "aversion" to roundabouts. We have several smaller ones right here in Utah. Maybe on this particular road they've studied that and figured that it wouldn't clear enough traffic like this CFI does. Maybe we don't want to have to go through a roundabout right before trying to enter the freeway right there. Maybe it would be too close to the roundabout that's already at the front of the college right there. Maybe they figured that it would be too costly to figure out how to integrate and then do so with the proximity of this intersection's branches combined with the number of lanes (it may be too irregular). But that's just my guess for this particular one. I have no idea about the others. But we do have a lot of roundabouts these days. Even my parents' little city of around 3000 people installed one at kind of the front of the city from the outskirt roads. It's a single-lane one as most of our roundabouts are. I don't even know if we have any multilane ones.
Illinois too, I'm in Northern Illinois about 10 minutes from the Wisconsin border and they're putting them in over here too. They are built in areas that honestly didn't need them and the budgets are in the millions, its insane.
@@AcousticGString yep, seen unnecessary round abouts. Some I'm told are only busy part of the day such as a school or large company letting out. Cities will put in small round abouts to discourage semi traffic in certain areas. Oshkosh wi has round abouts back to back. No sooner are you through one, there's another. You really need to know where you're going when you hit these. My pet peeve with round abouts, beside snowplowing, is that they mound up the center and plants things obstructing the view of traffic. The whole idea is to increase traffic flow instead they hinder it by restricting the view.
As someone living in the US who is from a country where roundabouts are common. Yes people struggle with them here. Just think of them as joining a one way road, that's it, you get on it when it's clear then take whatever exit you need. Don't stop on it just like you wouldn't randomly stop on a normal road because someone was waiting to pull on to it. Also it keeps traffic flowing and doesn't need electricity. It could be used to replace so many stop lights. It really would be a great solution for a lot of intersections. You can use them to pull a u-turn safely. I love them.
This can be very useful in situations when you have an intersection where a left turn is used more than average while having a lot of thru traffic. Plus, overpasses aren't always appropriate (as well as an eyesore) and a roundabout isn't going to work well when a lot of traffic wants to get off on the left most exit. I installed one of these on Cities: Skylines for this specific situation, along with timed traffic lights, and it's extremely smooth with less congestion.
I love this kind of stuff. I suppose I'm a traffic nerd like you. Didn't know there was so many people like me! I'm in Utah also and like the creative things they've done on left turns. You should do one on the U Turn lane things.
UT-154, also known as Bangerter Hwy was an under budget solution which saved cost without compromising performance more an necessary. In SLC County is also Redwood Rd. which also uses a CFI.
Come to Gwinnett County GA: We have it all - Diverging Diamonds (two on I-85), Continuous Flow Intersections (Main Street Snellville). We don't have any straight roads that follow cardinal directions though.
The other big downside I see from these is the extremely large amount of space they take, these really seem to be a very niche option for intersection design.
I did not know about that. I am sure to be there for some odd reason sometime in 2021. I live off of i79 near Neville island. Edit: I watched the video about the road. Now that I see the design, I may not. I would more likely be passing through I70.
It's amazing how these things that make walking even worse are considered a band-aid to the final solution of just ridding the area of foot traffic entirely, when all you did was make the area into a pass-through nothing blob space that's ugly, noisy, and produces no tax revenue. Good luck with that.
Cool video on an interchange i've never seen before. Can you design a city with only public transit? Leave the cars out of the city limits and have everyone catch a ride on a: Bus/Train/Taxi/Metro/Bike/ect. with no private vehicles allowed in the city limits. Or why cant we build tunnels cheaper.
I like your vids. One traffic issue we have in Southern California is the proliferation of left-turn arrows. Yeah they're fine at most intersections but they also create more congestion in many cases. Some areas here have LT arrows from one residential street to another. These streets might have 5 or 6 cars a minute. It's stupid. Fortunately some areas like Orange County and Palm Springs area have LT arrows but switch to yield-on-green so we aren't stuck when there's on coming traffic.
My very first time driving on Bangerter Highway was in the middle of a heavy snow. Tried to turn left. Ended up getting confused because the signs seemed so be sending me into incoming traffic. Ended up giving up and making a U-Turn to look for a sane road.
The dreaded left turn! I think I can get use to this. I hate the North Carolina solution of banning left turns at red lights and sending everything to the right, then turning left down the road at left only U turn. Then, there are all those brand new round abouts that pop up all over the back roads. Regular folks don't know how to behave crossing those. I see them stop for no reason, or go left! A few streaks of black rubber going straight accros tell me someone had a bad day.
"They just don't let people cross the street, so you got to go buy a car". Yes, not so funny. We have got some of those. Also the kind you can't cross when you are on a bike. For a car at 60Mph one mile detour is one minute, for a pedestrian .. who cares ! Main objective to save the car a minute.
the biggest problem is people don't understand them. The 2nd biggest problem is space, look at the big cites and you will have to tear down buildings to do this.
I remember a couple of places in the SLC area (one by the airport, iirc) where the right-turn traffic goes straight while the through and left-turn traffic all crosses to the left side of the road. (I looked it up - there's one's at Bangerter and the 201, though I don't recall where the other one was.) What's your take on those?
Looks like a great idea, if people pay attention to what they're doing and get in the proper lane when they're supp.... Nevermind, it's not going to work.
"People think it's weird" isn't a valid argument against this type of intersection. I'd like to know if there are any true downsides to widespread implementation of these intersections beyond universal opposistion to change. Seems like all pros and no cons to me (assuming you have the space for all the lanes).
utah is literally the wild wild west of roads. i come from norther cali and the roads are extremely basic here (my city of 300k has 1 roundabout that i know of, to put that in perspective) and i know we were following the rules but it felt like we broke many moral and spiritual laws driving in salt lake city 😭
This is crazy, the house I used to live in got demolished in that clip of bangerter highway and then I moved to an Apartment on this intersection. I swear this guy is stalking me
This guy is a nerd...in the best way! Rob you rock man I’ve only seen 5 of your videos so far and I’m hooked these are so informative!
Same here!!
Then you should like NotJustBikes at least as much! : ua-cam.com/video/knbVWXzL4-4/v-deo.html
Don't want to sound like a smartass, but wouldn't a large enough two lane roundabout do just fine? No phases at all, less electricity bills (only for street lamps, no traffic signals), less stopping so consequently less CO2 and less fuel consumption etc. Plus it allows pedestrians to cross safely, as roundabouts slow the flow, and that even rhymes, wow. Conclusion: roundabouts are awesome. Right?
@@inertboi yea.... you know building a round about cost millions right?
@@coltonkinsey2977 hell no, where did you get that from? They cost about as much as the conventional intersections to build, and are much cheaper in the long run. You're way off buddy.
Dude your channel directly appeals to a weird nerdiness I have about traffic engineering and I'm so thankful I found it. I'm literally a doctor in training lmao.
Cities skyline will fix that itch
So glad I live in Utah where we are constantly changing the intersections and confusing everyone
mmm yes and annually seeing the state flower; the elusive orange cone.
And every time it rains it's a guessing game of whether you're following the right semi-invisible road lines
I would love to see a video about the Michigan left turn.
Woo Utah! I love these intersections. They feel so much faster. Especially on redwood and 5600
Theres one in branson missouri the 1st time you see it when driving up to it confuses you
Still better than all those fucking hills and blind corners on 248...
I prefer Michigan lefts as a retrofit over CFI/other more intrusive intersection designs when possible
This guy speaks with no ums or ahs. And what straight teeth! 😄
I was there when the first CFI was opened to traffic in GA (GA 53 vs GA 400) in 2018. People were hella confused. You can hear profanity and people yelling "this aint gonna work" "this sucks" etc lol One downside of the CFI is corner business could be decimated due to loss of traffic. The Shell gas station closed down right after. Kroger behind it also closed down.
They turned the highway into a freeway? What's the difference between the two?
A freeway is "free" from at-grade intersections (stop signs, traffic signals, etc.). The entire road has its grade separated (bridges, underpasses, tunnels) from cross streets and access is available only via ramps.
A highway is any road that primarily serves vehicles traveling longer distances. So while all freeways are highways, not all highways are freeways. Hope I'm making sense, lol.
I watch these videos to help with my city skylines layouts and traffic handling
There’s at least 2 of these in Minnesota. Good to know what the reasoning is behind it.
Why doesn't Google with all their fancy sensors, devise smart traffic lights to see the numbers of cars coming from far down the road, and adjust light timings on the fly to get the most cars through with least delay?
You already know the answer you stick in a roundabout
Everyone who learned to drive in New Jersey: "They let you turn LEFT?!"
Lmaao it’s true
Aahh, the good old JerseyJug Handles...lol. Rt. 70 near Brick Township is the craziest stretch. Within 3 intersections, all different, a jug handle, circle, and something else that I don't even know the name for...lol.
@@mr_coffee0109 and then there’s also Bay Ave and Hooper Ave. An at-grade cloverleaf in Toms River by Ocean County Mall. If you know then you know
@@z609gaming yes I do, right by where it intersects with 571. It's like they should have removed the traffic light and replaced it with an overpass making it a Cloverleaf interchange. I used travel through that intersection as a kid to go to the shore at Island State Park.
Across the river, PA has some Jersey-style jughandles, all on 4-lane roads. Examples include US422 in lower Berks north of Pottstown, PA309 in Montgomeryville.
I came here to say “we have tons of these in Utah!”
And then you said it.
Same lol
Went through one of these in Utah. By, "went through", I mean that I wanted to turn left but was so confused, I ended up going straight through having to do a U-turn and right over a period of about 5 minutes and probably breaking a few laws.
by any chance (?) did the cop say:
"may I see your out of state driver's license . . .
" Yup ! . . . you're good to go ! "
B-)
@@solarnaut lmao
Wow, never seen one of these before. You need A LOT of space for them.
You do, but it’s wonderful!
Better bulldoze that bicycle lane and bus lane to make room.
@@schroedingershat7912 and homes, stores, parks, etc?
@@josephj6521 Only if we replace the homes with high density housing with no parking. They don't need parks because they're in a 'high transit access area' (at least until we bulldoze the bus stop for another intersection).
Considering they're being replaced with on ramps and bridges, the space isn't really an issue. Either one takes plenty of land.
When I was in Germany, in the late 1960s, they had something odd on the side of the streets in larger cities. It was an old fashion looking "Side of the street, traffic control light looking Light" like we used to have HERE in the 50s a before (when people actually PAID ATTENTION to said Lights). It had 4 lenses and each lens had a Number on it. When the number lite up, all you had to do is adjust your speed to THAT number and you would make the NEXT GREEN LIGHT. You never saw much traffic congestion and the traffic was always moving. Saved on fuel, brakes and yes, even TIME. As you didn't have to come to a complete STOP then take off again. Always wondered why they didn't do that HERE in the U.S.
Because innovation costs money.
They do something similar for trains in the USA.
@@ashkebora7262 Not as much as making new roads!
And I wonder why we don't have more of these here in Germany.
According to Wikipedia we have less than 20 Geschwindigkeitssignale (speed sign) installed here in Germany.
I regularly drive on a road with such a system and I think it works perfectly (as long as nobody drives faster than the sign says).
So I don't understand why it isn't used more often.
@@Jehty_ Here in the states, that variable sign would just say ZERO. I swear traffic control teamed up with the oil companies to try and MAXIMIZE fuel consumption. I cant tell you how many times I stopped at a red light for minutes, and NO ONE went through the green, and as soon as the cross traffic turned red and we turned green, cars would start accumulating on the cross road that was just green while we were waiting..
Where did you find a revolving McDonalds sign? Ain't seen one in years.
I've NEVER seen one!
The intersection shown here is University Pkwy and Sandhill Rd in Orem Utah. So there is at least one there.
There is one near my house on Dorchester Rd. Summerville, SC
Riiight
@@JonathanNelson-nelsonj3 The one at the beginning of the video in the time lapse was State Street and Center Street in Orem. So there's two, less than 2 miles apart.
Americans: "we have to find a way for people to turn left without many crashes... Let's make a Super intricate road!"
Europeans: "...what about roundabouts?"
That was literally my thought when starting this video 😂
Roundabouts in The States are really becoming fairly common.
They blew a lot of peoples minds at first, but they've adapted fairly rapidly.
I've experienced a few of the intersections in this video and they DO WORK.. but are much more intricate and people don't pay enough attention to be in the correct lane upon approach for them to be so sporadically placed.
In most areas of the US anything heavier than neighborhood traffic comes to a 3-way standstill in a roundabout and they greatly increase accidents because most US drivers aren't familiar with them
There's actually a roundabout just off camera to the left!
They're unfamiliar to most drivers in the US. The cameraman is standing in behind the largest university in Utah. Very few people know how to drive in them properly, and the traffic in the surrounding area is too heavy for proper enforcement (or teaching).
Two: roundabouts are often known as a traffic calming device, because they force traffic to slow down. This doesn't work well in places like Utah where snow plows require a certain amount of momentum to do their job properly.
@@osco4311 the whole slowing of traffic is crap doesn't stop the plows in northern Europe: Sweden Finland etc. That all have very snowy winters and require the road closing. Roundabouts literally would solve this issue and more
lol I had no idea these were actually things. I thought it was just "something weird." Great video, keep them coming!
They are the crazy intersections in UDOT's nightmares!
I live here and hate them.
Out of town visitors always complain about them!
We have this here in San Marcos TX. It is in fact weird to drive on the left hand side of the oncoming traffic suddenly.
UDOT loves to try out new ways of frustrating drivers. We have the CFI’s, Diverging Diamond’s, FLEX lane’s and the absolute worst is this left hand turn light that actually happens after the intersection. UDOT since this video has removed an additional 5 CFI’s along the Bangerter Highway and have since converted them to freeway interchanges. Makes driving that highway much nicer. The issue with the CFI’s is remembering that you shift over much earlier to make a left turn and sometimes you forget and miss the turn. Well, guess there is also another issue of people still going to the light and still try to turn left holding up the through traffic.
@@castirondude there are a couple near College Station as well.
People can’t even handle a simple left turn arrow. I can see this going very wrong in Los Angeles.
Getting a driver's license is too easy in America. It should be a hard test where you must get all the questions right. A hard question could be the difference between a life saved.
@@ILovePancakes24 agreed
Miami too.
@@ILovePancakes24 should be a returning thing. Like you need to recertify every 2 years. Lots of people don’t seem to know the rules of the road
In Germany we have something called "Right-hand drive bid" [Rechtsfahrgebot] which applies especially to our Autobahn. (Highway) This rule ensures that overtaking is only legal from the left side and that slow vehicles have to take the lanes on the right side. I have seen a lot of dashcam footage with accidents that would have been prevented by this rule.
As a Brit, we don't have this sort of space, especially in urban areas, so we just use roundabouts.
I was about to say, just replace everything with roundabouts, and im from America
But we are still figuring them out. People think either
A) always _stop_ before you enter a roundabout, even if its empty, or
B) you always enter at _full speed_ even if the roundabout is full
@@jeremywoods770 not even sure why it's that difficult. Yield means yield to existing traffic. If no traffic, you have nothing to yield to so you just... Go. Then again this is the same country that can't seem to figure out how to merge into a freeway. Most seem to think you're supposed to match up with a random driver in the right lane and play a game of chicken with them.
@@alexmawdsley i know, right!?
@@alexmawdsley Bold of you to assume people know how to drive :P Yeah I see the chicken thing everywhere. In my city there are two or three roundabouts and I see one every day where I run. I see absolutely pants-on-head retarded operation by at least one car there every single day, and I'm only looking at it for a minute or so. People waiting for cars on the other side of the roundabout to come all the way around/exit the roundabout are the biggest problem. If the car's not near you you *cannot* physically hit it, simple physics, just go, just drive!
@@quantum_immortal69 Make you wonder if they also stop at highway interesections, because they see a car comming from the right?
They put one of these in by my old on ramp and it genuinely saved me 15 minutes every day.
Ever hear a GPS try to pronounce "Bangerter highway"? I forget exactly what it is but it's funny.
I know where that is.
When I saw this video the first place I thought of was Bangerter/201.
They stopped saying most of the names and if a highway number is available. It sucks, because nobody knows where Hwy 154 (Bangerter) is, and definitely not Hwy 85 (Mountain View Corridor).
The "long term" strategy to these is kind of clever in a way. In the example you gave they had already purchased the right of way for the planned future freeway, so maximizing that footprint without building a grade separated interchange increases the value of that investment while waiting to finish a future phase of development. Also the increased pre-existing road surface seems like it would make construction phasing safer and more efficient when you do upgrade eventually.
As someone from the Netherlands, its really interesting to see road engineering in the US. This is a very clever solution to keep CARS moving. However, wouldn't it be more effective to invest that money and engineering time into providing options for people to walk, cycle or use public transport? Instead of building roads to deal with endlessly increasing demand, off load some of that car demand to other means of transport. I find it funny that pedestrians were mentioned once, with no real alternatives except for an expensive tunnel that I'm sure most of these intersetions won't have. I didn't see a single cyclist or form of public transport. No wonder traffic sucks in the US.
[sarcastic answer] Well, yeah, but This Is America! and it would be Un-American do do anything that might upset or harm our oil-company overlords! [end sarcasm] Honestly, most newer cities and pretty much all suburbs (where most Americans live) were designed from the ground up to be car-centric and car dependent. Social prestige is often affected by how car-dependent your neighborhood is (how big is your yard? how hard is it for "The Poors" to get to?) To make US suburbs walk/cyclable, you'd have to convince people to give up land for paths and lanes for bicycles (and protection curbs), convince people that maybe they don't really *need* that much lawn, and maybe there could be more housing instead. Convince people that poverty is not a personal moral failure (that's the hard part). It would be easier to level it all and restart from scratch. In the place where I grew up, cars were so necessary for living that the concept of not having one was utterly unthinkable. Not having even the crappiest most beat up car meant you were the poorest of the poor, and in America, that is a Sin. The importance of cars is baked into American culture and, though we're making tiny inroads on changing that, will take a lot more than a couple of pedestrian-aware intersections to fix. Pardon the rant, but "wouldn't it be more effective" makes it sound a lot simpler than it is.
The US is a big country and unless you live in a metro area and only travel within the metro area you'll need a car if you want to do what you want to do and not just wherever the bus happens to go at certain times. State of Utah alone is over 5 times larger than your home country, some people's commutes each day is measured in hours not minutes so having your own vehicle is a must if you want to have a decent job. Not to mention the time and cost of building infrastructure over a big country, not every place is going to be great and everyone learns how to deal with it and get on with their day.
@@s0nnyburnett I never said get rid of cars lol, plenty of Dutch people drive to work because its the best option. My point is that there should be more options, and even in the US, a lot of car journeys are short and in built up areas where other transportation options are possible. In the country side, of course, use a car, we do that too.
Those pedestrian tunnels must be scary. Seems like a place where people frequently would get robbed or assaulted. I think I would rather dodge the cars.
Who wants to spend hours lining up and waiting at the side of the road just to get on a Coronawagon? Public transport use in my region has stabilized at 40% of traditional level for the past year. The "change" that has occurred is that people have realized that taking the bus is inconvenient and disease-ridden. I will ride in the comfort and safety of my personal automobile and go where I want, when I want.
I LOVE the CFI in Cities Skylines. The improvement over a conventional intersection is dramatic, and watching it work is like art. I didn't think I'd like it even better than the diverging diamond interchange, but I do. It is THE highest capacity level intersection, and so much less disruptive than a grade-separated highway interchange.
it is great for traffic flow, but the only problem I have with it is that it doesn't let through traffic continue without stopping.
@blackhole4106 At the levels of traffic where a CFI is needed, nothing short of a highway interchange does that. If a roundabout hits capacity, people have to stop and wait too.
In the UK we wouldn’t even attempt to find a “one size fits all” solution. You just build whatever intersection suits the circumstances and people just deal with it. (Well mostly).
[shudders in magic roundabout]
hatched yellow boxes work really well
basically what these americans are trying and failing at
@@Hdtjdjbszh hatched boxes work when people actually listen to them... or know what they even are
Yes and because of the ''non standard'' aproach you have no idea what lanes you can use for forward unless you have clear markings and signage. Lack of road markings and random unnecessary logic are the reason for plenty of near misses and accidents that could simply be avoided by a bit more standardisation and leaving only the more complicated situations as ''exceptions''...
A big weird roundabout with 7 directions, 23 traffic lights and 3 shortcuts so nobody understands what's going on?
Without clear signage I would totally miss the left turn, because I would think "Oh, I'm not turning there, I'm turning up *here*!"
Thats the problem. Road signs in the US are not clear or consistent. European road signs are much clearer.
Ran into one of these outside Cincinnati, I'm sure it's great if you know about it, I definitely missed my turn when I used it cuz I knew my left turn wasn't until the next intersection but didn't realize I had to cross at the previous one.
You have a great way of conveying a lot of complex information in the most straightforward way. Awesome content you're providing
Or you could build a roundabout! They work no matter how busy they get
False
Happy Valley, AZ roundabouts were redesigned into a crazy looking intersection
Look it up if u don’t live here
Because they were way too damn busy
@@madmonkey8141 from what I find online the 2 roundabouts were always meant to be an interim measure. Looking at the aerial photos of them, they are quite small compared to the ones we use in the UK. In fact they are on par with the ones we use to get into a supermarket and don't look fit for purpose for a busy intersection.
Although I agree with you in principle with your particular example, a big 3 lane roundabout at the junction in the video would work better than the way it is currently. You could also use traffic lights on the roundabout during rush hour, again fairly common here.
@@anthonycarless1748 On Dutch way of roundabouts; ua-cam.com/video/41XBzAOmmIU/v-deo.html
@@raphdroidt692 just like ours but without the cycle lane. Do the cyclists have right of way?
It would had been easily solved with a roundabout...
I was thinking that too. But Americans aren't well constitutionally suited to big roundabouts. Each driver thinks the whole thing is theirs. Drivers in roundabouts have to be willing to work together.
Please bring this design in a hurry to i95 exit 16 ives dairy road, (NE, 203) in Miam, FL.
That spot already has a bridge taking traffic over the highway below. He said that the diverging system he talked about was used only to allow the state to save money to build a bridge which is a more permanent solution.
There’s a 1/2 one (it’s a normal intersection on one side, this on the super busy side intersecting it) on SR82 just outside Ft. Myers, and it has made a huge difference! It looked crazy, but when the traffic to turn right backs up the 4 lane road for a mile at least twice a day, and the highway is getting widened, why not, right? Awesome. There is a ton of farm traffic that comes north on SR 82 from Immokalllee, semis filled with produce from the tomato, bell pepper, and fruit farms, and of course the citrus groves, and it is dangerous as all get out. Mix it with a large suburb (Lehigh) with underdeveloped infrastructure, and you can imagine that it’s a mess. That intersection is one of the 2 main ways to get into Lehigh from Ft. Myers, I-75, Cape Coral, etc., so it sees pretty heavy traffic and was a great place to try it out. It takes twice the space, but traffic flows a million times better. Thank goodness, because a new high school opens up next year not far from it, lol! Good luck and hopefully the planners in Miami-Dade will be able to sell the idea on your side of the state!
They added one of these to my hometown 2 years ago. No one had a clue what they were going for but it's honestly great.
Great videos, Rob! Your explanations and visuals are incredibly helpful and easy to understand.
I also want to mention - thank you for your Lexus video. I have a base 1991 LS that is very similar to yours - no sunroof and cloth interior. However, I did get the keyless entry and mudguard options. I didn't even know keyless wasn't standard, until I saw yours!
Keep up the great videos!
I go through this intersection a lot. It made a huge difference in how long it takes to get through that very busy intersection. I love the new design. Very smooth and efficient.
You can do a lot of interesting designs when you are in the country side where the land is almost free.
You also usually don’t have the traffic to justify weird designs.
Yeah there's really a lot of opportunity to ruin everything with more concrete
The intersection shown there isn't really in what'd I'd describe as "countryside" - it's right next to a university campus so the land was probably pretty expensive.
There’s one of those on highway 71 in Austin! I just thought it was poor design but it makes sense. Thanks for the info!
Austin liberal commies using socialist engineering!
Jk 😋 we have a couple here in Georgetown Tx and boy it works! Kinda confusing but you get used to it 😁
There are also a couple in San Marcos and College Station.
Hey Rob, I am a big fan of your videos. The way you present information is extremely entertaining and informative.
It would be really interesting if you could do a video on 4-way stops. It seems like no one actually knows how to use them properly. The city that I live in has also started replacing some of them with roundabouts. I'd be interested to hear what you think of 4-way stops, if they are the most effective solution, and if traffic lights or roundabouts are better options.
Traffic lights are never a better solution on junctions with light traffic.
We have several 4 way stops where I live and a few are high traffic-ish. They work great. You get to go when it is your turn. I sit at a 4 way stop 30 seconds tops. A light cycle 2 minutes.
Remember: "L" is for LEFT ... and "L" is for LAST. If you are turning Left, You are LAST!!!! All other traffic goes before you.
Lots of places put left turns first. And some lights in my city have left for some directions both before and after the light.
can you do a video on teardrop roundabouts/dumbbell roundabouts?
I'm not familiar with those. Holy cow, those look crazy! I need to see if there are any out west that I can see/video. Thanks!
@@RoadGuyRob look at carmel, indiana
Look kids Big Ben Parliament
These are super common at minor freeway interchange in New Zealand.
@@RoadGuyRob I-25 and 14th Street, Loveland, Colorado. Right next to the Loveland Park-n-Ride.
Excellent videos, Rob. Subscribed when i saw your first one.
The big drawback of cfi is the space it will take. In my opinion, when the space is tight and traffic is heavy, the best way is to have each direction have its time, with smart use of right- and left- turns in other directions so the use of common area is maximized.
My city opened one up there I live at an intersection that was always congested and the traffic would run back forever up and down the road. Once the intersection went in, the entire highway cleared up. It was like magic.
We have one of these in Lafayette La (Johnston St @ Guilbeau Rd). People still get confused at it years after
I saw someone turn left from Johnson and end up in the left turning lane on Camellia just this week.
I swear there’s on in Baton Rouge but I can’t find it
@@nc818 It was the first CFI in the US, and it's at Sherwood/Siegen and Airline.
As someone who uses an intersection like this quite often, I find them awful. They take FOREVER and people just don't know how to use them
Do you know why they are confused? Que up at the arrow of your direction sounds pretty straight forward to me.
@@p1x3lman you underestimate how retarded some drivers are
I'd rather sit an extra minute or two than endure 10 years of road construction to add these lanes.
HEY THAT’S MY SCHOOL YOOOOOO I’m like “wait, Utah’s university parkway uses that!!!”
I saw the name of this and I was like Ibet that is what they are using on university parkway. Then I started the video and was confirmed.
That intersection doesn't work well for me, there have been times where cars cross in a yellow light and get stuck in that intersection during a red light. My solution is to make a left turn a block before and go the long to get to that shopping center there, I have noticed that over time more cars doing the same thing, I got that idea from public transportation, the local bus does that.
Me too!
@@PurpleObscuration: "Shopping center..." Ha, you could just say "Walmart."
Brigham Young's ghost must have convinced them! 😂
My favorite unique road intersection is where you can take an exit and then rejoin the express lanes at the the light and beat a line of cars.
Palatine Rd.
Maybe you can do a video on the complete lack of high mast lighting in CA and how every other states puts them on EVERY interchange! Cool videos BTW!
didn’t even know this was a thing until i left CA 😭
I've actually seen it over a number of interchanges and some high-traffic exits in the LA/OC area, especially near Disneyland. It seems to be spreading as they work on other areas, as well.
When I started watching this video, I did not expect to see the intersection across from my school being featured
We have one of these here in Michigan too. (@Joslyn & Brown roads) Except, it was put in a rich area where there ISN'T any foot traffic. And second, it was put in BEFORE traffic got too high instead of waiting until traffic became a problem! Two roads cross in a plus, Northerly roads have a slip lane to turn right, no waiting. West bound traffic can turn left early and fill up a slip lane next to the first one. Enough people understand the concept that even if you DON'T, you can just follow the car in front of you and be okay. One road has on-ramps to a freeway on it, the other is lined with stores (Sam's Club, Aldi, Kohl's, Kroger, etc.) so different speeds, different car volumes. It works just fine, but signage and lane markings are CRUCIAL!!
Most people ARE stup!d. But given time, they CAN understand things that are NEW to them! Round-a-bouts, diverging diamonds, "continuous flow intersections", etc. Makes a LOT more sense than having EMPTY HOV lanes during RUSH HOUR!! How about we focus on teaching slow drivers to stay OUT of the PASSING LANE?!?
Feels like a good opportunity for someone to end up in a lane going the wrong way
Obviously the designers know that and design accordingly. Like how they place a jutting edge on a highway exit so people dont accidentally turn in.
My gosh....
So their ARE brain waves being used by the 20-30+ people standing around a road construction site with hard hats on, leaning on shovels, doing nothing except watching one person in a backhoe for days at a time.
"There, their, they're". Find the correct homonym/homophone.
@@coloradostrong eye blaim aw toe corewrecked.
This came up on my feed and I knew instantly I'm gonna like this channel. And as an European my obligation is to bring up roundabouts! Safe and affordable!
The road I live on has 6 consecutive single-lane roundabouts. It's probably an artifact of bad city planning given how extremely close they are, but they work very efficiently.
On roundabouts in The Netherlands: ua-cam.com/video/41XBzAOmmIU/v-deo.html
Traffic circles killed the round about. The average person doesn't know the difference
Also as an European I have to add the fact that city planning can also be made without giving cars the priority. European suburbs are much denser and thus have more potential to get public transport such as trains, and local walkable surroundings with cafes and shops. Of course European suburbs are car-dependent on many cases at least on the outer edges of the city, but the street network is planned to serve both pedestrians and cars.
Roundabouts are coming to the US. Around here they're building a ton of them on country roads where cars don't feel like yielding to traffic. But I also see them being built near freeway on/off ramps and in spaces where they have multiple roads intersecting and have the space to put in a roundabout rather than a light.
Loving your videos dude. Are your sun glasses safety glasses from the hardware store? They look look mine.
I live in Canada and they are just about to open the first ever displaced left turn in the country in my hometown. I personally think it'll be a lot better than the conventional intersection however a lot of people are freaking out over it and saying they're going to just completely avoid it. Hopefully, once it opens, they see it's really not that hard to navigate and the only difference is the left turn.
We have one in baton rouge louisiana and i never knew what they were called until now. You would never know how good it is until you have one it helps traffic sooooooooooo much. The 50% of the time having green is pretty accurate the traffic flows so well.
Airline at Siegen, I live right around the corner. Greetings!
@@wadeguidry6675 hiya haha
I'd love to see you do a video about the benefits of electric / hybrid cars! I dont know if its in your wheelhouse, but I think you could have an interesting take on it
There are none... The batteries and other tech in the cars are MAJOR polluters and those cars are COAL powered for the most part or fossil fuels.
Now if CA wanted to put in a bunch of Thorium Salt reactors to make electricity, then we are talking about a long term sustainable power source. Much more Thorium than Uranium and you cannot turn the leftovers into bombs. But they could be used for Nuclear batteries for communications devices on mountain tops and other remote places as they cool off. The waste from Thorium is much less hazardous than standard Uranium reactors.
Doing this at a smaller, 2 lane scale also has its benefits. Especially for those making left and right turns. I just cant help but feel like its an optimal solution in almost all cases...
I thought this intersection type looked familiar, we’ve got one in Fenton, MO, suburb of STL.
Or they could just put in a two lane roundabout with right-turn bypasses.
That would probably be a much bigger hassle to build and drive through for a street this size than you think.
@@HelloKittyFanMan. Firstly, it would be much easier as you wouldn't have to build and maintain the signaling.
Second, a roundabout would use less tarmac, leaving more for trees and grass and other things that help with flooding.
Thirdly, it'd simply be safer. I don't trust American drivers, not even with a CFI.
Forthly, I don't have exact numbers, but it looks like it only needs a four lane road. About say 100m before you'd make it six lanes and use the outer for the slip-lane, giving plenty of time to merge on or off.
Oh and fifthly I'd give better fuel economy, so would be easier to drive through in that way.
@@mathiastwp: There's nothing about American drivers -- at least those of us in the US -- that makes us any worse, generally, than those in other continents.
You should see Practical Engineering's video about how expensive they are to build, even with the signals considered. We may not have the budget for one this big in this city or state yet.
It may actually be _too much_ hassle right there just before the freeway.
Tarmacs are just in airports.
@@HelloKittyFanMan. Just being a pedant, but no part of an airport is reffered to as "the tarmac".
As a European, just build a damn roundabout 😂
Problems: 1. We're actually _not_ European, and 2. that would probably be too expensive for this size of street and our state, or too much hassle to go around in right there on our way to the freeway which is just barely past that.
@@HelloKittyFanMan. Yes, we know you're not European, because you drive cars big enough to have a grizzly bear behind the steering wheel. Point is, a roundabout or turbo roundabout is definitely cheaper than some convoluted traffic light system. It depends, of course, on how many lanes of traffic you have, but more than two lanes in either direction should not have a single-level intersection.
@@SeverityOne: Why do you bring up the size of _some_ of our vehicles, as if that should make any difference (like you don't have any over there)?
And what do you mean by "a roundabout or a turbo roundabout," as if turbo roundabouts aren't already roundabouts despite the word "roundabout" in their term?
Look at the number of lanes on our road right here in the video then. It was my understanding that a roundabout that size could be prohibitively expensive, at least for our city or state. And many more people head to the freeway from this side than from the west side of the city, so they probably are glad that they don't have to be bothered with hooking into and out of a big circle every time they just want to go to the freeway entrances, which are just the next block.
@@HelloKittyFanMan. I didn't say "as a European", that was "nerdegem". And indeed, nobody over here drives such big cars as they do in North America. The roads simply aren't big enough.
A turbo roundabout is indeed a roundabout, but a more efficient one. It has a greater capacity than a normal roundabout, but like a roundabout, it has a certain limit to its capacity.
Point is, a roundabout (and especially a turbo roundabout) has a greater capacity than a traditional intersection, with or without traffic lights.
I've never quite understood the American aversion to roundabouts. They weren't a thing when I was young (let's say the 1970s, early 1980s) but now you find them everywhere. The other Europeans looked at what the British were doing and figured "yeah, that makes sense".
@@SeverityOne: Oops, I lost track of which people were saying what, LOL; sorry! Anyway... I bet there are some people over there at least some places in your continent with things like a Ford Excursion or a Chevy Suburban. Maybe not many, though.
You're still not making sense with your " 'turbo roundabout' vs. 'roundabout' " logic. It's as if you don't think the differentiation words "standard" and "regular" don't exist, so you say "but like a roundabout" as if the other option wasn't also one. You did use the word "normal," though; however, you didn't perpetuate that. The comparison only makes sense if you continue to use a word like that to separate the two.
Roundabouts "weren't a thing" when you were young? Oh? When were they invented, according to you? The encyclopedia says the term was coined in 1960 and the first standardized one in the UK was installed in 1966. And maybe they existed even before the 60s under a different term, but I can't find anything "concrete" until 1960. So obviously they existed before you were born.
I don't know about the Latin countries or Canada, but at least here in the U.S. part of the continents, I'm not sure why people claim we've had an "aversion" to roundabouts. We have several smaller ones right here in Utah. Maybe on this particular road they've studied that and figured that it wouldn't clear enough traffic like this CFI does. Maybe we don't want to have to go through a roundabout right before trying to enter the freeway right there. Maybe it would be too close to the roundabout that's already at the front of the college right there. Maybe they figured that it would be too costly to figure out how to integrate and then do so with the proximity of this intersection's branches combined with the number of lanes (it may be too irregular). But that's just my guess for this particular one. I have no idea about the others. But we do have a lot of roundabouts these days. Even my parents' little city of around 3000 people installed one at kind of the front of the city from the outskirt roads. It's a single-lane one as most of our roundabouts are. I don't even know if we have any multilane ones.
Oh ya right buddy....people can’t stop at stop signs or use their turn signals...I see people driving head on down that “left turn lane”
Oh your God, Wisconsin is still trying to master the round about. Couldn't imagine having this.
Illinois too, I'm in Northern Illinois about 10 minutes from the Wisconsin border and they're putting them in over here too. They are built in areas that honestly didn't need them and the budgets are in the millions, its insane.
@@AcousticGString yep, seen unnecessary round abouts. Some I'm told are only busy part of the day such as a school or large company letting out. Cities will put in small round abouts to discourage semi traffic in certain areas.
Oshkosh wi has round abouts back to back. No sooner are you through one, there's another. You really need to know where you're going when you hit these.
My pet peeve with round abouts, beside snowplowing, is that they mound up the center and plants things obstructing the view of traffic. The whole idea is to increase traffic flow instead they hinder it by restricting the view.
Some other ideas: ua-cam.com/video/41XBzAOmmIU/v-deo.html
As someone living in the US who is from a country where roundabouts are common. Yes people struggle with them here. Just think of them as joining a one way road, that's it, you get on it when it's clear then take whatever exit you need. Don't stop on it just like you wouldn't randomly stop on a normal road because someone was waiting to pull on to it. Also it keeps traffic flowing and doesn't need electricity. It could be used to replace so many stop lights. It really would be a great solution for a lot of intersections. You can use them to pull a u-turn safely. I love them.
Round abouts are pretty awesome when done correctly and not confused with a traffic circle.
This can be very useful in situations when you have an intersection where a left turn is used more than average while having a lot of thru traffic. Plus, overpasses aren't always appropriate (as well as an eyesore) and a roundabout isn't going to work well when a lot of traffic wants to get off on the left most exit.
I installed one of these on Cities: Skylines for this specific situation, along with timed traffic lights, and it's extremely smooth with less congestion.
In columbus we have inverted and diamond interchanges on 270. I like them, except right turns must go SLOW. You can blow thru left turn.
Idaho have been putting CFIs in Boise. And replacing old Freeway interchanges with a SPUI. or Single point Urban Interchange.
Huge one of these was completed last year at the intersection of the loop 1604 frontage road and Bandera road in San Antonio, Texas.
ah i hate that intersection so much lol
I love this kind of stuff. I suppose I'm a traffic nerd like you. Didn't know there was so many people like me! I'm in Utah also and like the creative things they've done on left turns. You should do one on the U Turn lane things.
Try a traffic circle. It’s much more efficient. But then again most motorists aren’t smart enough to use them correctly.
UT-154, also known as Bangerter Hwy was an under budget solution which saved cost without compromising performance more an necessary. In SLC County is also Redwood Rd. which also uses a CFI.
Hey Rob, What about the famed Michigan Left?
Come to Gwinnett County GA: We have it all - Diverging Diamonds (two on I-85), Continuous Flow Intersections (Main Street Snellville). We don't have any straight roads that follow cardinal directions though.
The other big downside I see from these is the extremely large amount of space they take, these really seem to be a very niche option for intersection design.
When in doubt roundabout as i always say.
@@zerotheliger: That would probably be even harder on a road this size.
WHY DONT WE HAVE SMART SMART TRAFFIC LIGHTS? Put an Xbox at every intersection that can read the traffic and make smart decisions!!
There's a serious need for federal oversight on all roads because of the looney things the locals do with TDC
It’s bad enough places are putting in roundabouts.
Pennsylvania got its first diverging diamond at the Interstate 70/U.S. Route 19 interchange in Washington County
I did not know about that. I am sure to be there for some odd reason sometime in 2021. I live off of i79 near Neville island. Edit: I watched the video about the road. Now that I see the design, I may not. I would more likely be passing through I70.
It's amazing how these things that make walking even worse are considered a band-aid to the final solution of just ridding the area of foot traffic entirely, when all you did was make the area into a pass-through nothing blob space that's ugly, noisy, and produces no tax revenue. Good luck with that.
Cool video on an interchange i've never seen before. Can you design a city with only public transit? Leave the cars out of the city limits and have everyone catch a ride on a: Bus/Train/Taxi/Metro/Bike/ect. with no private vehicles allowed in the city limits. Or why cant we build tunnels cheaper.
Nice videos, I have an idea/suggestion for one.
"Michigan Left"
I like your vids. One traffic issue we have in Southern California is the proliferation of left-turn arrows. Yeah they're fine at most intersections but they also create more congestion in many cases. Some areas here have LT arrows from one residential street to another. These streets might have 5 or 6 cars a minute. It's stupid.
Fortunately some areas like Orange County and Palm Springs area have LT arrows but switch to yield-on-green so we aren't stuck when there's on coming traffic.
ah, yes... the youtube algorithm, brings us here once again
My very first time driving on Bangerter Highway was in the middle of a heavy snow. Tried to turn left. Ended up getting confused because the signs seemed so be sending me into incoming traffic. Ended up giving up and making a U-Turn to look for a sane road.
The dreaded left turn!
I think I can get use to this. I hate the North Carolina solution of banning left turns at red lights and sending everything to the right, then turning left down the road at left only U turn. Then, there are all those brand new round abouts that pop up all over the back roads. Regular folks don't know how to behave crossing those. I see them stop for no reason, or go left! A few streaks of black rubber going straight accros tell me someone had a bad day.
"They just don't let people cross the street, so you got to go buy a car". Yes, not so funny. We have got some of those. Also the kind you can't cross when you are on a bike. For a car at 60Mph one mile detour is one minute, for a pedestrian .. who cares ! Main objective to save the car a minute.
That spinning McDonald’s sign caused me to have a seizure. 😂
Now show us how an elderly wheelchair user and a kid biking to school get through here.
Did you not watch the video? There is a pedestrian tunnel beneath.
the biggest problem is people don't understand them. The 2nd biggest problem is space, look at the big cites and you will have to tear down buildings to do this.
I swear, this guy looks like PewDiePie's half brother!
I remember a couple of places in the SLC area (one by the airport, iirc) where the right-turn traffic goes straight while the through and left-turn traffic all crosses to the left side of the road. (I looked it up - there's one's at Bangerter and the 201, though I don't recall where the other one was.)
What's your take on those?
Looks like a great idea, if people pay attention to what they're doing and get in the proper lane when they're supp.... Nevermind, it's not going to work.
"People think it's weird" isn't a valid argument against this type of intersection. I'd like to know if there are any true downsides to widespread implementation of these intersections beyond universal opposistion to change. Seems like all pros and no cons to me (assuming you have the space for all the lanes).
utah is literally the wild wild west of roads. i come from norther cali and the roads are extremely basic here (my city of 300k has 1 roundabout that i know of, to put that in perspective) and i know we were following the rules but it felt like we broke many moral and spiritual laws driving in salt lake city 😭
This is crazy, the house I used to live in got demolished in that clip of bangerter highway and then I moved to an Apartment on this intersection. I swear this guy is stalking me
Sorry about your house. Sucks for you when they do that imminent domain stuff.
Roundabouts work fine in the UK... Until they put traffic lights on them that is...
"They just don't let people cross the street, so you gotta go buy a car" 🤣
All of this just to avoid a roundabout ;P
Only kidding America