Brits use shoulders to cut highway congestion

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dangerboy
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Brits use shoulders to cut highway congestion

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In the last couple of years the UK has started using new scheme to reduce bottlenecks by letting motorists use the shoulders of some motorways (divided highways).  It's all controlled by electronic signs.  When traffic backs up the speed limit is automatically lowered and signs change to allow for driving in the shoulder.  Cameras monitor the shoulders for stalled vehicles to keep things moving safely. Extra wide spots are created along the route for cars to pull over, and sensors automatically dispatch service crews when this happens. Driving on the shoulder is only allowed between intersections, to keep it from interfering with merging traffic.

I-70 under I-435 comes to mind as a local bottleneck that might benefit from this scheme, by letting cars use the shoulder for that one mile segment where I-70 drops from six to four lanes.  Some parts of I-435 in Joco might also be possibilities.
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Re: Brits use shoulders to cut highway congestion

Post by AllThingsKC »

How does that work for CLEARING the cars off the shoulder for emergency vehicles?

And how would this help in JoCo? The bottle necks from car accidents in JoCo are CAUSED by the idiot Kansas drivers who were driving on the shoulder in the first place.  &
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Re: Brits use shoulders to cut highway congestion

Post by geeman68 »

Hmmmmm. In twelve years of living in Kansas City, I've never seen anyone driving in the shoulder lanes.  Intriguing idea though. 8)
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Re: Brits use shoulders to cut highway congestion

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There are refuge spots every few hundred feet where people can pull off of the shoulder and out of the way of traffic.  And the the whole thing is monitored very carefully with  lots of cameras.  If there is an accident and an emergency vehicle needs to get through on the shoulder, the signs direct drivers to merge back into the regular lanes.
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Re: Brits use shoulders to cut highway congestion

Post by homer37 »

Massachusetts used to allow this during rush hour (1996-1997, I have no idea if they still do or not) on the highways in the Boston area. It seemed there were a lot of wrecks due to cars driving on the shoulder hitting cars that were broken down/people getting tickets/et cetera.
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Re: Brits use shoulders to cut highway congestion

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geeman68 wrote: Hmmmmm. In twelve years of living in Kansas City, I've never seen anyone driving in the shoulder lanes.  Intriguing idea though. 8)
I've seen it happen more than a handful of times on I-35 where there's congestion.  Unfortunately, I've also seen emergency vehicles unable to get to the scene of an accident because some jackass decided he needed to zip around the congestion on the shoulder.
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Re: Brits use shoulders to cut highway congestion

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midtown wrote: I've seen it happen more than a handful of times on I-35 where there's congestion.  Unfortunately, I've also seen emergency vehicles unable to get to the scene of an accident because some jackass decided he needed to zip around the congestion on the shoulder.
It works in the UK because they enforce traffic laws a hundreds more strictly than we do in most US cities, and especially Kansas City.  Driving on a shoulder when it's not allowed would get your picture taken by a traffic camera and several hundred dollar fine.  People follow traffic rules there, because they are much more likely to face consequences.
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