I went on a trip yesterday and I tried it, it sure didn’t seem to work at all, one person who is stubborn, slow or whatever can mess the whole thing up.
Yes zipper merging happens, but ultimately in any kind of traffic flow situation it only takes one person to fuck it up. Instead of being reactionary and blaming “bad drivers,” try to take a step back and realize that a transportation system that relies on millions of individual actors, having perfect information and behaving rationally is hopelessly flawed, regardless of the nationality of the drivers.
extensively. daily. anyone who picks up their kid at school inevitably has to flow through several. its generally not a problem unless someone isnt paying attention, or just being an ass.
I think it is the law in PA, but it is at the very least, posted to use both lanes to merge point and then alternate. It worked well in my experience. It was quite a shock when i moved to Maryland and merging was so lawless.
Yep, Minnesota had some of the best I’ve seen in the US. But it took just one person who didn’t know or didn’t care to jam things up.
Any traffic design that relies on drivers simply “knowing” the unwritten/unposted way of doing things is going to fail. There will always be a new driver, an out of towner, etc, who will react in surprising ways when faced with a new situation.
In Georgia? 75% chance it works
In Florida? 0% chance of yes
florida man: looks down. pulls. “yup. it’s merged.”
Floridian here confirming that 0%
In Atlanta it’s like a -55% chance it works
Yes, I see it happen successfully every day on my way home from work.
Honestly this is one of the few things that have improved in driving over the years. There’s still the occasional douchecanoe who rides in between both lanes to keep anyone from getting by, but that is now the exception as far as I’ve seen.
When 99% of traffic has already formed a single lane then the guy trying to go past a bunch of people and cause an extra unnecessary merge is the asshole and I’m not letting him by.
That used to be my old daily commute. Everyone had already “zipped up” were now in a bumper to bumper column, yet people just fly down the right and then cutoff the whole column to get in. Delaying everyone. Anytime I bring up this “problem” I am told it’s actually not a problem, it’s the way it’s supposed to work, and apparently I am the asshole for complaining about 2 dozen people cutting me off every morning, before I can move past one choke point.
I might be wrong about this, but I think you’re supposed to wait until the last minute to zipper merge. That way, everyone gets the benefit of it.
Idk about any of it. All I know is after they redid the highway and made those two lanes merge at that point, there is now a 10-15 minute backup, when previously traffic in that area was hit or miss. If there is actual traffic it can take almost 30 minutes to go through that one point.
And the trucks are so darn fed up with it that they just block off the end of the lane end now, as they can get caught cutoff by cars for seemingly endless time, they become sitting ducks.
This is correct.
I feel like it’s hit-or-miss. A lot of people will zipper merge, but a lot of other people don’t care and mess things up.
Like once, but generally naw.
If two cars from one of the queues go through without letting someone in, then the pattern just resumes right after that
I’d say it’s pretty typical where I live in the US. Yeah, there’s always a couple of assholes, but most people stick to it.
In Canada it seems to depend on the city. Calgary is good at zipper merging, Victoria doesn’t seem to know what it is.
Same. I’ve found Minneapolis to be fairly good too, but I only visit occasionally for work.
Yes and no. Some people think that the zipper merge would improve traffic flow, and eliminate backup at a merge point. I say that it’s not failure to zipper-merge that causes backups, but it’s backups the provide the conditions in which people fail to zipper-merge.
We can divide traffic at a 2-lane-to-1-lane merge into three conditions: Traffic volume that 1 lane can handle; traffic volume that’s too much for 1 lane, but 2 lanes can handle; and traffic volume that’s too much for 2 lanes. Obviously, too much traffic for 2 lanes, in 2 lanes, is already a traffic jam, and a zipper merge cannot fix it. Traffic volume appropriate for 1 lane, but that’s spread out over 2 lanes can easily coalesce into 1 lane. The zipper merge is good and appropriate in this scenario, and this is where I’ve seen it work the way some people think it should. But that’s not zipper-merge magic. Merging early works, too, because a volume of traffic that fits in 1 lane, well, fits in 1 lane.
It’s the scenario in which there’s traffic that fits in 2 lanes has to merge into 1 lane that’s the problem. Just like how you can’t fit a water buffalo in your carry-on bag, no matter what clever packing technique you employ, there are just too many cars for 1 lane, and there’s going to be a backup. It’s only after there’s a backup that the conflict between the merge-early and zipper-merge people arises, so picking one or the other can’t change the basic fact of the traffic backup. At best, the zipper merge reduces the spatial length of the queue of cars waiting to merge, but does not improve the throughput of vehicles at the merge point.
I see it all the time I think, but maybe my standards are low. Often what I see the traffic isn’t quite equal in both lanes, so it’s not abab, but people see the guy ahead find a space and they pick a space behind the next car and so on. It’s there more to it? Like if someone doesn’t get it, you just continue the zipper behind them, right?
It doesn’t flow well, it’s more of a stop and start.
I’ve gotten into some very amusing fights online about the difference between merge and yield, some people are just assholes when it comes to driving and refuse to accept they might be doing something wrong.
