Where new is worse than old

[cbalducc]

Where has new construction made highways or interchanges worse than the ones they replaced?  God bless.

[english si]

M40 J10 used to be a 4-ramp interchange. The main flows (other than the M40 mainline) are from the A43 to the M40 South and vice versa. When it was a 4-ramp interchange this was fine, but the junction got turned into today's layout when they upgraded the A43. Now the main flows cross each other at the roundabout. The simple and cheap solution is to take the original slip road, that currently just serves the services, and plug it back into the main junction.

[apeman33]

The U.S. 400 bypass around the west and south sides of Dodge City. Sure, it takes cars away from downtown but railroad tracks forced the design of odd (to me) junctions at U.S. 50 and U.S. 56 and the signs at each end don't indicate which towns the bypass will help you reach (The control city on U.S. 50 is "JCT U.S. 56" and vice versa when it would be more helpful for the signs to say "WICHITA" on U.S. 50 and "GARDEN CITY" on U.S. 56). I think when you approach the bypass from the south on 283, there's no indication you can go to Garden City or Wichita from there.

I still prefer going through Dodge City because there's no services on the bypass until you get back to the 56-283-400 junction in the southwest part of town (and I actually don't like that "Presto" store) and I don't think the bypass saves that much time because of how far around Dodge it takes you.

[agentsteel53]

I still prefer going through Dodge City there's no services on the bypass

yes!  southwest Kansas is notorious for this.  Garden City is the same way.  compound this with the fact that some gas stations simply aren't open for business at 4am on a Sunday, and I dang near ran out of gas a couple weeks ago.  I had to use my mobile phone's internet capability to note that there was an 24-hour unmanned vending station in Ulysses, at which we put 11.1 gallons into an 11.9 gallon tank.

[Crazy Volvo Guy]

M40 J10 used to be a 4-ramp interchange. The main flows (other than the M40 mainline) are from the A43 to the M40 South and vice versa. When it was a 4-ramp interchange this was fine, but the junction got turned into today's layout when they upgraded the A43. Now the main flows cross each other at the roundabout. The simple and cheap solution is to take the original slip road, that currently just serves the services, and plug it back into the main junction.

New being worse than old is fairly common in Britain and other European countries, though, no?

Seems they'll come up with any way they can to frustrate drivers into not driving anymore.

[english si]

New being worse than old is fairly common in Britain and other European countries, though, no?

Seems they'll come up with any way they can to frustrate drivers into not driving anymore.

Yes, but not on routes which they have just spent millions upgrading, and not as part of 'junction improvements'.

Normally the schemes that butcher the road are honest and talk about traffic calming, pedestrian access (which is fine on many roads, but when it's replacing subways and footbridges on main roads with signallised crossings is annoying), bus priority

[ctsignguy]

New being worse than old is fairly common in Britain and other European countries, though, no?

Seems they'll come up with any way they can to frustrate drivers into not driving anymore.

Yes, but not on routes which they have just spent millions upgrading, and not as part of 'junction improvements'.

Normally the schemes that butcher the road are honest and talk about traffic calming, pedestrian access (which is fine on many roads, but when it's replacing subways and footbridges on main roads with signallised crossings is annoying), bus priority

My experience is that schemes to 'calm traffic' usually end up agitating drivers

[Revive 755]

I personally don't have much experience with the following, so I'm estimating how much worse they are:

* I-57/I-70 at Fayette Avenue in Effingham -  Old:  Diamond with a loop for the NB Fayette to SB I-57/WB I-70 that appears to have a somewhat decent length acceleration lane.  Planned new:  Plain diamond.

* I-465 at the Sam Jones Expressway - Old:  3/4 cloverleaf with a semi-direct ramp for SB I-465 that enters the Same Jones Expressway on the left.  Planned new:  Plain diamond

[vdeane]

My experience is that schemes to 'calm traffic' usually end up agitating drivers

That's precisely the point.

[Scott5114]

Pretty much any new sign in OK will be worse than the old...