The Honolulu lane zipper is famous sliding jersey barriers across the highway in Honolulu, opening or closing lanes, depending on the time of day and traffic. [In Seattle, the express lanes on I-5 are bidirectional, depending on traffic, which accomplishes basically the same thing.] I’ve actually driven by the lane zipper while it was working, and it’s a pretty sight to see, really.
In the course of my typical commute, I come across four stop signs, six traffic lights, and a roundabout, all of which have proven to be difficult for some drivers around here, but that’s another story for another day. I went to work early this morning, about an hour earlier than usual, and noticed something unusual – every traffic light was flashing red, except for two, which were flashing red on the side streets, and yellow for the main thoroughfares. It seems that Springfield has seen the light (ha!) and given drivers a little more control over their travels during very light or nonexistent traffic conditions. Thanks to the 4-way intersections, I cut several minutes out of my drive. Any time saved not commuting is a good thing, in my mind.
What about your city or town? Any innovative or time-saving traffic signals, lanes, etc?
Hooniverse Asks Bonus: Creative Traffic Innovations?
By Marcal Eilenstein
Sep 1, 2015
Ross Ballot 
Jeff Glucker
There’s a similar lane zipper on the Golden Gate Bridge.
http://www.thebolditalic.com/articles/6624-you-need-to-watch-the-golden-gate-bridge-zipper-in-action
They have one on the Ben Franklin Bridge crossing from Philly into New Jersey, as well.
http://media.philly.com/images/600*450/20101013_inq_rappoport13-a.JPG
The Walt Whitman has one too.
There is one on the Walt Whitman to. I am pretty sure that most bridges have them around here. The lights indicating open and closed lanes stopped that because of the amount of head-ons, There seemed to be one a week and they were horrific. I remember when I was a wee hoon and having to drive across the bridges with traffic going in the opposite direction in the next lane over without a barrier was scary and made for some precision driving.
http://media.philly.com/images/600*450/20100815_inq_cu1davies15b.JPG
There’s a zippertruck in DFW. I’ve been here 20 years and never seen it work.
Yes, on I-30 (East R.L. Thornton Freeway) in Dallas, between downtown, to just east of LBJ.
http://storage.torontosun.com/v1/dynamic_resize/sws_path/suns-prod-images/1297340208863_ORIGINAL.jpg?quality=80&size=650x
We have a slightly simpler solution for one of our local roads – a light hanging over the middle lane that dictates if you can drive in it or not. Of course, a barrier wouldn’t be feasible with the plethora of crossroads, and maybe not quite so necessary with a 50km/h speed limit.
We’ve also made an HOV lane for one of the transit services on one of the local highways by letting them drive on the shoulder for a stint, in specific conditions.
Not one stop sign, roundabout or traffic light on my commute. But Scandinavian cities have for decades had “night shifts” on motion activated traffic lights. That means all the lights are red, and your light will shift green on your approach. That is pretty handy, until people get used to that, drive a bit too fast, and meet at crossroads. There can only be one…green light.
When we visited my mother-in-law in Columbia, MO this summer, she made a point to warn us about the Diverging Diamond interchange near her house, so we researched it. It’s actually pretty seamless and transparent when you drive it, even though it sounds and looks complicated. Apparently there are a bunch of them in Middle America. http://www.divergingdiamond.com
The DDI is really catching on. We’ve designed a couple in our office.
We’re in the middle of getting one in Colorado Springs. We’ll see how it goes, the design looks easy enough but we’ve had roundabouts here for a while and people still can’t figure them out, so…
Oh, then you’d love this!
http://www.a2gov.org/departments/engineering/traffic/publishingimages/Maple%20and%20M-14.jpg
Got one of those on the north end of town too!
Or this:
I don’t know what I’m looking at but it looks painful
It is the magic roundabout in Swindon, UK. But don’t worry there is a sign that explains it all.
Peoria, IL does something interesting with the protected-left turn signal. The signal heads have the standard red, yellow, and green arrows, but there’s a fourth aspect that’s a flashing yellow arrow that indicates that left-turns are allowed after yielding to through traffic.
Chicago, of course, still runs its traffic signals on a clock, so regardless of whether a car is waiting on the cross street, the lights will change by the schedule.
St. Louis has a lot of those flashing yellow arrows, too. It’s nice because it allows a left turn while oncoming traffic has both a green straight and a green arrow. However, I’ve sat at them a bunch, and never had the opportunity to use it during the one cycle that it makes a difference, there was always too much traffic.
Right turns on red, with a mandated stop to watch out for traffic, have been a thing in Eastern Europe forever:
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/a9/Gr%C3%BCner_Pfeil.jpg
Pretty neat!
When I took my driver’s license, I didn’t come to a full stop at one of these, I went merely down to 1-2kph, the hypermiler that I thought I was. That almost cost me my first attempt at the license. In the end, all went well.
DC has “Express Lanes” on one of the 95s that switches directions based on expected traffic. Basically you pay a couple bucks every few miles and get to drive with less traffic. It did save me about 45 minutes when I accidentally took it coming home from Charlotte a few months back. That was only because of construction though. http://wtop.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/01/95-express-lanes-opening-day-kst.jpg
Oh, and there’s also the hottest concept in traffic management these days, variable demand-based tolling. It’s big in Southern California now. Basically, they’ll let single occupant cars into the carpool lane if they pay a toll, which is based on how congested the general purpose lanes are.
But when I lived in LA, I just stopped taking the HOV lanes even as a carpool, because you still needed the electronic transponder in your car and their vendor charged ridiculous fees for inactivity.
Bergen, Norway, the first city to be ring-fenced by a citywide toll, has been contemplating the same thing for five years now. It appears to be political dynamite. We have a municipal election on september 14th and I’m pretty sure we’ll get a congestion rate hike then. The supposed fee is 100 NOK per entry, lasting one hour – that’s 12$ at today’s rate. The normal rate is one fifth of that.
Also, lanes reserved for at least two occupants per car have been very popular lately:
http://www.ntrogaland.no/Skilt%20Sambruksfelt.jpg-for-web-small.jpg
I do run into one thing that I am starting to like, green lights for multiple lanes. Let me try to explain it. I am at the south side wanting to go left, mine turns green, the eastern side right turn gets a green, the north side left turn gets a green and the western side right turns green. When I’m on the south and turning right, eastern left gets a green, north right turn gets a green, western left gets a green.
http://i2.wp.com/hooniverse.info/wp-content/uploads/2015/08/45000347_d7235d9b58_z.jpg?resize=700%2C525
VTEC kicked on, yo! Dorifto!