Letter 306
Here are two little things that bug me about traffic patterns and planning. Maybe it is just me, but if I am driving in residential or even business areas where there are a lot of intersections, I think it is weird and dangerous when you come to an intersection but the traffic coming from a dead-end street does not have to stop. This seems to happen a lot where a main road ends in cul de sacs where the “dead-end” is only one block long. Not much traffic comes from there and it is easy to miss the fact that on-coming traffic has no stop sign.
The second minor thing is when you have multiple lanes of road or entry ramps to a highway where the lanes merge and signs say the left lane ends! Again this does not make logical sense. Merging traffic in the US comes in from the right lane the vast majority of the time. The right lane is the slow or merge/exit lane. Faster traffic is encouraged to use the left lanes, implying they have priority. Why tell a priority lane that the lane ends…… merge into the right lane……. and sometimes when you reach the end of the entry ramp you have to merge left again? These little things just bug me from time to time.
MidiMike 
What do you think of traffic circles? I hate them; I think they’re really annoying, and regular old intersections are just fine.
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I had to think about this one for a while. They do not have many in my immediate area. In travels, I have seen turn-a-bouts that work really well and ones that don’t. I don’t like to stop if I don’t have to. I travel a lot late at nigh when there is very little traffic. Stopping for no one is a pain.
Again, this might be a planning issue. If there is a large enough area to dedicate to the circle and also have clear markings for out-of-towners to see easily, I think it can work. Thanks for your patience and I truly appreciate your comment!
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