Diverging Diamond Walking Tour

A narrated walking tour of the nation's first diverging diamond interchange in Springfield, Missouri at the junction if I-44 and MO-13.

Category:

Science & Technology

Tags:

• Highways
• Interchange
• diverging diamond
• Missouri
• MoDOT

[streettrip]

"Beautiful view of the interstate?" "Eloquently placed signal." Very nicely done to show why these places are incredibly hostile to the pedestrian and unpleasant for everyone.

[erfurt4]

This is the worst environment that has been built by man. This engineer needs to stop sucking on tail pipes and start walking. It is a shame that so much money was spent to accommodate the car.

[piratef2004]

Washington, Pa will have a Diverging Diamond Interchange sometime after 2014. I believe it would be the first in the State of Pennsylvania to be completed.

[ebeighe]

ug. what a car-sewer

[nictamer]

This is so unintentionally hilarious. Thanks for the laugh.

[DrummerBoyJason]

I would be confused by the presence of a pedestrian too.

[samgoatfish]

i'd be totally ok with my blind kid walk around here. what could possibly go wrong?

[yesteray]

My favorite failure of this video occurs at 8:48 when the narrator say, 'having received a positive walk signal' and it shows the signal turning to the flashing red hand and then he begins to walk.

The narrator has never spent much time as a pedestrian.

[MatthewJohnLambert]

Traffic engineering has really lost any bearing with reality. First of all no person would ever walk in this location if they could possibly avoid it. Traffic engineering only ONLY ONLY cares about cars. Now on the subject of cars, the diverging diamond is an absolutely ridiculous solution. Only one lane can proceed at a time. They are simply trying to reduce stacking onto the freeway, but the freeway itself is what creates the stacking by having too few intersections.

[strongtowns]

I think engineers fail to understand that pedestrians are actually not in cars. It is difficult to fathom such a hostile place to be outside of one. It took me a long time to realize that the narrator was not being sarcastic but actually believed this to be a great thing. Can you imagine the terror of being vision-impaired and encountering this nightmare?

[cthrume]

First, credit for making the interchange safer for walkers. However...

This is little more than lipstick on a pig. They've taken an ugly, unwalkable place and made it slightly less inconvenient for pedestrians (and no less ugly).

So highway engineers and car drivers like it. Great.