eksb

eksb , 1 month ago

Diverging diamonds are great if your only consideration is car throughput.

If you are considering people walking or riding bicycles, they are shit.

eksb , 1 month ago (edited 1 month ago)

This is expensive to address because you have to separate cyclists out to the right before the right car lane splits for right turns before the crossover. And then you have to build a bridge or tunnel for cyclists and pedestrians. On each side.

Really, any road busy enough to justify a diverging diamond probably already needed separated bike lanes. But in America (motto: "If you aren't in a car, you don't matter"), there almost certainly was not any cycling infrastructure there before.

There is one of these near me. Their solution for pedestrians is to make them cross the high speed outer lanes four times (where drivers are encouraged to not slow down). Their solution for cyclists is take the lane and pray or get off and do what the pedestrians have to do.

Edited for clarity: pedestrians cross four times, not drivers are encouraged to not slow down four times.

eksb , 1 month ago

To be clear, it is four times that pedestrians have to cross, not four times that drivers are encouraged to not slow down. Drivers are not explicitly encouraged to not slow down, but the point of the diverging diamond is to make drivers not have to slow down.

eksb , 5 months ago

Yet another XKCD where he delivers the punchline, and then goes on to explain the punchline.

eksb , 5 months ago

It is cringe because the XKCD guy does not know when to stop. The second part of the comic (the white on black part) makes it worse. The graph is the punchline. But then he keeps drawing, and ruins it.