Commuting: The strange. The Odd. And the FUN

I don't remember seeing those. Were they a short lived experiment, or did I just blow through them not even realizing they were there?

I agree.

Here's one near where I used to live. This is the Rich St ramp to 315 North in Columbus, OH. The ramp is short enough that even when it's not being metered you have to gun it to get up to merging speed (60 mph). I frequently saw cars stopped at the end of the ramp because they didn't have enough speed, or chickened out. When it is metered you have about 266 feet from the traffic light to the merge. It so aggravating....who in their right mind designs this crap?

Long Island, N.Y. on the western section of the Northern State Parkway there are some of those ingenious (more like wtf) stop lights on the entrance ramps.

Haven't been used in years....wonder what that failed project cost.

Even back when they were in use many just ignored them.

THey are still in use as of yesterday...

so you are one of "Those"....the kind that does not grasp where the yield sign is....

it is not the one in the right lanes job to yield to you.

Clutch that KLR up into a wheelie and show 'em who's BOSS!!!

Just be sure you remembered the cover for your milk crate.

I saw ramp lights in Phoenix, and asked my uncle (who lived there, then) about them. Turns out they were metered - only supposed to let in so many folks during rush conditions to prevent overloading of the freeway. Didn't guarantee you a merge spot, but prevented a line of stopped cars on the ramp (hopefully).

Here's some info:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ramp_meter

"In 2000, a $650,000 experiment was mandated by the Minnesota State Legislature in response to citizen complaints and the efforts of State Senator Dick Day [3]. The study involved shutting off all 433 ramp meters in the Minneapolis-St. Paul area for eight weeks to test their effectiveness. The study was conducted by Cambridge Systematics and concluded that when the ramp meters were turned off freeway capacity decreased by 9%, travel times increased by 22%, freeway speeds dropped by 7% and crashes increased by 26%. However, ramp meters remain controversial, and the Minnesota State Department of Transportation has developed new ramp control strategies. Fewer meters are activated during the course of a normal day than prior to the 2000 study, some meters have been removed, timing has been altered so that no driver waits more than four minutes in ramp queue, and vehicles are not allowed to back up onto city streets."

+1!

They've started putting those metering lights here in Baton Rouge. Every time I've encountered them working, there was so little traffic on the interstate it was totally unecessary and merely served to cause everyone merging to be going 20 mph slower because they had to stop 2/3 of the way along the ramp.

There is a yield sign around here that is THE worst part of my drive home. Merging traffic from I-77 south and north, going to 224 west.

Traffic southbound has a yield sign, right after a blind corner. Ramp is easily negotiable in a car at 65 mph. So, you get cars rounding the corner at 65, merging into traffic at a SLOWER speed, which has the right of way according to the sign. The ramp from northbound I-77 is more like 45 mph, on a good day. Fairly tight and bumpy as shit.

It's a cluster fuck. The faster traffic sees the yield sign, slams on the brakes to let the slow traffic by. Or you get some asshole that knows you have the yield and wants to race you to the end of the merge area.

I've seen WAY too many rear enders on that ramp, I flat out refuse to stop on that ramp if i'm riding. I'll pass a stopped car on the shoulder if i have to, Its not that fucking hard to merge, retards.

What makes matters worse is that ODOT didn't feel the need to paint dotted white lines denoting two lanes, even though the merge area is a good 1/8th mile long and can accommodate 2 cars wide for a good distance.

So many nights i've wanted to show up to that ramp with a sawzall and cut that goddamn yield sign down.

Looks like they make the southbound traffic yield so that traffic doesn't back up in the left lane of 77 northbound (since it's a left lane exit). It's still a poor highway system. I hate traveling through Akron, half the time I'm lost.

Here in so cal the speed limit on the freeways is usually 65 mph but you'll be hard pressed to find anyone going slower than 75 mph if there is no traffic and its common to see 85/90 mph from sport cars to mini vans to old rickety cars that shouldn't be able to go that fast.

So I'm chugging along with my girl on the back keeping just faster than traffic and in the carpool lane like normal. Along comes a cager and he apparently thinks I'm going to slow cause he starts tailgating. I'm not sure why but around here tailgating isn't from not paying attention but to persuade the person ahead to go faster. So I do what I usually do, I gun it for a few car lengths to put some space between us and go back to my cruising speed. The car doesn't gun it but he does pull up close again. Since it's dark it would be kinda useless to give him a stink eye or wave, which also often seems to work.
While I'm focused on the road for a moment my girl asks me, "Did that idiot just flashed his headlights at us?" (we have intercoms)
That gets my attention and I keep a close eye on my mirror and sure enough he does it again, mind you I'm already going faster than traffic, and there is no way I'm speeding up for this loser, he can wait til we get to an opening and he can go around. But he doesn't go around when it opens up, so I try to persuade him as he's flashed his lights a couple ore times. I release the throttle a bit and drop down to the speed limit, keeping a close eye on him ready to pull away if he does something stupid.
By this time I'm getting really sick of him, so when he does finally get over to go around I gun it as I'd started keeping pace with a car next to me he was forced to get over 2 lanes and then got stuck behind someone else. My girl & I have a good laugh about that, and when we finally get off the freeway the cager passes us and we discover it was the guys driving a prius :huh. I'll admit I haven't seen an overly aggressive prius driver before.

All in all, we get a good laugh from all the idiots on the road. It helps relieve the tension and keeps the rage minimal

Guess you can tell we only visit our friends back on L.I. on the weekends, huh? The ones we see then are off.

Okay. This is on the way home from work. Its three lanes but you must exit the right lane before it becomes two. The tractor trailer is in the right lane. I'm in the middle. Nothing in the left lane. The tractor trailer seems to wait a little too long to merge over. There's not really a sign there until about 1000 feet away. But you'll see the driver cross it on the street and still really wait awhile (maybe he saw me coming and decided to wait until I got by, I don't know). Regardless, he signals, I look to me left and don't see any cars approaching and move over to let the driver in. Now see what happens and please let me know what I could have done differently. BTW, the speed limit is 65, I was going 70-72.



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You did everything right, the minivan driver should have experienced the sensation of having the back 8 tires of a semi-trailer compressing his roof.

Yup.

I hope you knew that minivan was there and was closing on you. If he had chosen to change lanes to go past you at the same time you changed lanes, it might have been ugly.

I commuted on Hwy 50 in Colorado from Cotopaxi to Salida, and then north to Buena Vista. A 75 mile commute one way. Did it for 6 months and on the KLR as often as possible. A truly relaxing beautiful and fun drive. A bit chilly driving home before sunup though.

Summer brought afternoon thunderstorms. I'd very often just look at the clouds and decide if I could thread my way between them on the way to work or be stuck in the cage. One afternoon I chanced it and just outside of Coaldale I found myself approaching a storm. The gust front hit so hard it shifted me completely from the center track to the right shoulder on a two lane road. That's about the worst I've experienced while commuting on a bike. If you haven't made that drive, you should

That KLR was a SLAVE to any crosswind.

I work construction and my commute takes me along 35 miles of coastal highway, followed by another 5 to 15 miles to some site in Anchorage. The time that I am heading in varies depending on the job location and amount of daylight. When arriving into Anchorage, I try to fit into traffic as it builds, and travel a bit over the limit and keep some distance from other vehicles.
A number of times I had noticed a black Escalade with a rather distinctive driver coming down an on ramp and immediately diving into the left lane. If someone was there, they were cut off. If no one was in the right lane, she still took the left, where she stayed. When she reached her exit, she would dive for it at the last moment, cutting off anyone who might be on her right. As I said, I'd seen this pattern often enough recognize the car and driver.
One morning while cruising in a few miles over the limit in the right lane with no one around me, I saw her coming up on my left while we neared her exit. Watching her in my mirrors, I saw her speeding up to get ahead of me instead of just dropping into the empty right lane and taking her exit at her current pace. Not wanting to have my nose cut off, I matched her speed while keeping watch on her. She stayed in the left lane until we went past her exit! I was watching her in my mirrors and she was looking all around as she realized what she had done, before slowing down and taking the next exit a half mile further down.
I laughed and laughed and laughed!