Zipper Merge

Most Minnesota motorists start to merge in construction zones as soon as they see warning signs and learn which lane ahead is closed. This driving behavior, called "early merge" can lead to dangerous lane switching, inconsistent driving speeds that cause crashes, long back-ups that block interchanges, and road rage.

Research shows, however, that these dangers decrease and traffic moves more smoothly when motorists use both lanes until reaching the defined merge area and then alternate in "zipper" fashion into the open lane.
(http://www.dot.state.mn.us/zippermerge/)

Category:

News & Politics

Tags:

• Sequence

[Drux10zn]

In my opinion and my experience, all this does is reduce the distance of the backup, not your wait time. It looks like a shorter congestion, but you're still shoving the same amount of vehicles through the same bottleneck, so it's no faster. It's pretty.

[mpcluever]

I think it's funny that people all pile up in one lane a mile before they need to. It opens up my lane to LEGALLY drive all the way up to the merge. Please keep this marvel of efficiency a secret so I keep my fast lane. Anyone who thinks it's a good idea to crawl along while people fly by in the other lane is an idiot.

[BMason3604]

@mpcluever

You're just a dick bro.

[roobenhawk]

@Drux10zn It does a couple of things, with a known merge point and a more controlled merge there are less accidents compared to when a driver will randomly stop and try to merge well before. Also there are places where there may be an off ramp and congesting the lane prevents traffic from flowing off the road and increases the backup

[alphashadow3]

this music is abysmal

[glirkdient]

@mpcluever I typically thought of people that did this as impatient assholes. Now they are actually just being smarter than the rest of us.

[thesniffysniffy]

it's true that this won't improve traffic flow at the bottleneck but at least it reduces the queue. it might reduce traffic congestion further back, say if there were an intersection

[franpa3]

@Drux10zn It also makes for a more consistant driving experience, less stop and go.

[iraleecantellia]

Minnesotans are such passive-aggressive drivers, I've seen people in the merging lane pace the stop-and-go of the continuing lane, literally stopping traffic hundreds of feet before the merge point, just to piss people off. If I had a dash cam, I could make a comedy channel just from my daily commute.

[zReDYeLLoWGReeNz]

Minnesotans are being courteous here. All the people who like sitting in there car for hours listening to the radio or whatever sit in the right lane.

And the people who want to get home to see there kids or whatever there destination is...use the left lane

[HistoricLife]

@Drux10zn Sorry but you are wrong here. Part of the slow down is people moving slow with traffic, they are less likely to move slow when competing for a spot in the zipper. Zippers move slow, people lining up comes to a total stop. Zippers have been proven to work in many many studies.

[claudiuceus]

Who are the 2 jerks that don't like this video?