Comment by y-c-o-m-b | Hacker News Reader

Comment by y-c-o-m-b | Hacker News Reader

I've fantasized about doing this very thing for years!

There's a location here in Oregon that fails to tell motorists of a major traffic merge coming. If you miss the merge, you exit the freeway. Granted it's not difficult to get back on, but there's no way to know this in advance. Prior to the pandemic - at minimum once a month - there would be a traffic incident here because people don't get any warning this merge is coming up so make drastic changes at the last second.

Here's the location on street view. Notice there's nothing indicating a merge is coming on the far right lane: https://www.google.com/maps/@45.3709178,-122.7485804,3a,75y,...

Once you enter the turn to go right, still no indication of an upcoming merge: https://www.google.com/maps/@45.3703302,-122.7526115,3a,75y,...

Here's the merge, but notice that it's not until further ahead that you're now being notified the far right lane is an exit lane: https://www.google.com/maps/@45.37444,-122.7554676,3a,75y,13...

Result? A daily traffic nightmare and constant near-death experiences.

EDIT: BTW Google Maps makes it look like you have plenty of time to move from the exit lane and back onto the free-way, but it's an illusion. People are flying at high speeds on the left and you only have several seconds to get into the correct lane.

EDIT: Forgot to mention this funny part. Conversely on the other side of traffic for that same freeway (I-205), they DO make use of adequate signage. Here's one that shows a merge is coming up: https://www.google.com/maps/@45.370089,-122.749564,3a,75y,52...

About two miles down, they notify you well ahead of time that the far right lane will be an exit lane: https://www.google.com/maps/@45.373263,-122.7342592,3a,75y,8...

Reminds me of this onramp to I-376 in Pittsburgh, where you have a stop sign (!) at the bottom of the onramp (!!), which then dumps you into an exit-only lane with a few hundred feet to merge left (!!!):

https://www.google.com/maps/@40.4287854,-79.9328641,3a,75y,6...

I only took this ramp a handful of times before I learned to detour several miles to avoid it...

Ah-ha, found the spot in America where you can really benefit from driving a Tesla!

That's insane! My old F-150 L6 that I use for hauling project building materials probably couldn't get past 30MPH by the time that merge lane ended!

unless I'm missing some important context, the full stop seems like a really bad design choice here. where I live, that sort of entrance would just be marked "no merge area!". in dense traffic, people should probably stop, but in light traffic people could be going a lot faster; it really sucks merging into 65+ mph traffic from a full stop.

The hilly geography (and poor advanced planning) means you don't have room for your lane to continue ahead of you. It's an intensely short merge that would be dangerous to allow people to fly out into, given you don't have time to look and merge safely before your lane ends.

It's essentially:

1) Stop 2) Find a gap in traffic 3) Floor it

I suspect the whichever department is responsible for the intersection has some internal rules about where they put what kind of traffic signage and this merging area is too small for a proper merge with a yield sign so they just slapped a stop sign on it knowing full well that most drivers will treat it like a yield it in light traffic conditions.

Of course this causes problems when dutifully law abiding drivers from out of town follow the law to the letter and cause near misses or rear endings because they are behaving unexpectedly compared to normal traffic but that's not the problem of the people who put the sign there. Ignoring these kinds of edge cases and expecting someone else (often the courts) to sort it out on a case by case bases when it causes problems isn't exactly uncommon in government. It's like their version of an unanswered bug report from 2010 with a bunch of "hey I found this by googling and I have the same issue" comments below it.

This onramp became less stressful and more entertaining when I bought a sports car.

Grew up in Pittsburgh.

PA has the worst highway merging habits and I blame onramps like this. There's a number of them that are too short or have stop signs like this:

https://pghroads.tumblr.com/post/44161958475/the-stop-sign-o...

HAH! I took this exit twice last weekend! Really terrifying merge during Saturday afternoon traffic, but it was easy on Sunday morning (as I breathed a sigh of relief that I was leaving Pittsburgh and wouldn't have to do it again). Reminds me of a similar on-ramp onto the BQE in Brooklyn, which is equally if not more congested: https://www.google.com/maps/@40.6899298,-73.9989999,3a,75y,1...

The exit off I-376 coming out from the tunnel is also really annoying -- exit, then left turn over a bridge, then you're back on the highway and need to exit, then pick the correct lane to head into Squirrel Hill, but it seems pretty arbitrary, and you may end up making a weird left turn anyway just to get "into" the neighborhood.

Pittsburgh driving taxes one's navigation skills on a good day, to put it mildly. Lived in Squirrel Hill for 8 years and got used to it but it's probably the most local-knowledge-dependent driving I've seen in the US. The five-way at the bottom of Murray at Forward is fun too (you want to go straight, but WHICH straight?).

When I first moved to Pgh, the street map reminded me of this Mario Kart 64 level: https://mariokart.fandom.com/wiki/Yoshi_Valley

It was fun but happy to be back on the west coast now :-) Also, glad I've never had to drive in NYC -- that looks tense!

There are many of these on the 110 in LA, just north of where this story takes place.

https://www.google.com/maps/@34.1032407,-118.1923538,3a,75y,...

https://www.google.com/maps/@34.1133129,-118.1766803,3a,75y,...

https://www.google.com/maps/@34.1114424,-118.1817898,3a,75y,...

https://www.google.com/maps/@34.1070639,-118.1870749,3a,75y,...

etc.

Yeah that merge sucks all around in both lanes. The left lane just merges directly into the freeway with no onramp space, while the right lane exits. Meanwhile you've got traffic on I5 which is still coming up on you at 75mph since that's the point where the limit drops, and some of them want off at Nyberg.

Not my favorite interchange, either. Not the worst in Portland by far, but definitely awkward at times.

> Not the worst in Portland by far, but definitely awkward at times.

That's true. I could probably come up with a decent list of them.

This one in Portland is similar, and it's on a bridge. Everyone on the right wants to go left, everyone on the left wants to go right and all want to do it above 60MPH with as little space in-between as possible. Scares the shit out of me every time. https://www.google.com/maps/@45.5065751,-122.6714366,3a,60.7...

The solution here is to stay out of the merge lanes unless you need to merge.

And if you do need to merge, do so at the merge point, as per http://trafficwaves.org/seatraf.html

The merge point is as soon as the lanes touch. The dominant traffic flow is I5 to I84 and every last one of those cars has to switch lanes to get there, and some traffic will need to cross in front of them to get from I405 to I5. There's about a quarter mile to make it all happen, while on a bridge with narrow lanes 130 feet in the air, moving at speed. No, you will not be leaving large gaps to let people in, LOL. You will back off and leave exactly enough room for a car to get in front of you (assuming you are not just going to trade lanes). It works okay as long as everyone acts as expected and nobody wimps out. It can get dangerous when grandma goes through there and panics when it all gets really dense for a moment.

Which is a great solution if everybody complies, but when you have people unfamiliar with the area, bad drivers, and anxiety over Google Maps directions is when it spells trouble. I've lived in Oregon for over 30 years, so I don't typically have a problem but I get nervous over the unpredictable behavior of other drivers in those situations I outlined.

Wouldn't it be less work to just contact the Department of Transportation and make them aware of the issue?

I've done it twice. The response is basically along the lines of "thanks for letting us know, we are aware improvements in signage are needed" and then they never do anything.

Do it.

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