What is the purpose of this?
Apologies if this is the wrong sub for this, and would appreciate a nudge in the correct direction to ask this if that is the case.
I have a question about a newly renovated intersection in a high traffic area in my city. I am asking because I cannot figure out what the logic was behind this:
There is a street that connects my city’s Uptown area to the highway. The street, even further in is what I’d consider a high volume road because of the residential areas it borders, and the amount of commercial buildings that line the street. Before the recent completion of this project, the street was two lanes in either direction. They have added a super wide bikeway on one side and reduced almost the entirety of this road to a single lane, also adding raised dividers in what was historically turn lanes. Towards the end of the street it splits into two lanes but single solid white lines that designate the right lane as “buses and right turns only” on weekdays, and another drivable lane on weekends.
At the busier end of the street or “Uptown” is a four way intersection. This is the road I take to work. Normally I would drive in right lane because my exit that turns onto the highway is on the right, almost immediately after crossing the intersection. So people in this lane either turned right into another part of uptown, or went straight and immediately turned right to get onto the highway.
The issue now is that the because this right lane is restricted on weekdays, you basically have to cut over into the intersection to get onto the exit since you are technically not allowed in the lane you need to get over. This has proven to be unsafe. I’ve seen people get cut off, swerve to dodge a person who has about a car-lengths grace of turn time, and have had to dodge these people myself. I also find myself having to make less-than-confident maneuvers to make sure I can get off at this exit.
My question is why? What is the logic behind doing something like this? This is a construction project I’ve waited 3 years for, which was horrible in its own way with people using nearby residential streets as main roads for the last couple years, and now after waiting and waiting my drive is infinitely worse and slower and probably more dangerous. The only positive imo is that the roads are smooth and they installed some piping that was long overdue, but why did they rearrange the road? For the pipe? Because of community feedback? Like why? It’s one of the worst practical designs in the city.
Oh, and they allow parking on the right hand side when it’s technically “usable” and people sit behind parked cars thinking it’s traffic…