🚀 go-pugleaf

In <359a998e.97564812@newsvr> stevenhs@microsoft.com writes:

>I live in Seattle also and find no problem getting to highway speed in
>the very underwhelming vehicles I drive.  Maybe there are specific
>ramps you are referring to, but it sure doesn't seem any different
>than other cities (all US) that I've lived in.

I have lived in several states, and I can tell you with some authority
that California tends to design its highway with LOTS of onramps and
offramps, many of them too short to accelerate to the speed limit.  The
emphasis on California is to decrease city-street traffic, and to this
end, you will often find several onramps and offramps per mile of
highway, in the urban areas.  Due to the large number of onramps,
highways designers are obviously constrained in how they can lay out the
onramps.  In many cases the onramp is so twisty that you can't go faster
than about 25 mph until the last 100 feet or so.

Furthermore, in many the cases, the stream of traffic entering from an
onramp will be crossing the stream of traffic exiting the highway.  This
makes it impossible to speed up to full highway speed, because you are
crossing the path of vehicles that are slowing down to offramp speed.
This design strategy, of making streams of traffic cross, is very common
in California.  So long as the streams cross on the ramp itself, there
is no problem.  But when the streams cross on the highways itself, on
the rightmost lane, entering traffic can't simply speed up to full
highways speed without risking a collision with exiting traffic.

Due to the congestion on the highways, traffic speed is quite low during
the rush hour -- often as low as 10 mph to 30 mph.  The short onramps
serve their purpose and get the traffic onto the highway and off the
city streets.  During off-peak hours traffic is much faster, but the
simple solution is to drive in some lane other than the rightmost lane
and stay out of the way of merging traffic.
-- 
Rahul Dhesi <dhesi@spams.r.us.com>