Lanes that don't line up

[kphoger]

This is something that annoys me.  You come to an intersection, and the center line on one side doesn't line up with the center line on the other side.  Couldn't they have angled the lines slightly to make them line up?  But what's even more annoying is when only one through lane magically becomes two lanes on the other side of the intersection (better than the opposite, of course)–with no indication of which lane you're supposed to take, and the white line right in the middle.

Example:


The rightmost and leftmost lanes are turn-only lanes, and only the center one continues.  The dashed white line on the far side is dead-center in relation to the through lane.  Since the two lanes merge shortly thereafter, what is the purpose of having two lanes there at all?  Whenever I drive through the intersection, there's usually a car waiting to turn from the side road, yet the driver never has the opportunity to turn into the lane I won't be using, because he never knows which lane I will be using.

Other examples?

[vdeane]

Then you have stuff like this: http://goo.gl/maps/i6LlQ
US 11 north is two lanes approaching the intersection and after the intersection.  Some signage implies that only one lane actually goes through the intersection (the one with the slanted straight arrow - yes, there is such a thing).

[1995hoo]

Ah, one of my pet peeves in downtown DC. 12th Street NW is a two-way street between Constitution and Pennsylvania Avenues and it has three lanes northbound at all times, plus parallel parking on the right. After you cross Pennsylvania it becomes a one-way street and it has four lanes during rush hour and two lanes at other times (due to parking in the curb lanes outside of rush hours). So it's never all that clear to drivers how the lanes are supposed to work when you cross Pennsylvania Avenue. During rush hours some people shift to the right and others try to shift to the left. During non-rush hours the three lanes have to merge into two. I assume the reason they've never painted "puppy tracks" is the non-rush situation where three lanes become two–for obvious reasons, it wouldn't do to guide thru traffic into a lane of parked cars.

Not going to bother linking Google Street View because the Street View car was stuck behind a dump truck and so the images don't really show it very well. Satellite view is obstructed by buildings.


At an intersection near my house in Virginia one of the streets curves as it goes through the intersection. There used to be problems there with people going across into the wrong lane, but VDOT painted the "puppy tracks" (their term for those lines) and the problem mostly went away, although we still have a problem of people going straight out of a left-turn-only lane that's marked only with (a) pavement markings and (b) a diagrammatic sign on the RIGHT side of the three-lane road.

[Brandon]

Southbound Spring Road at 22nd Street in Oak Brook: http://maps.google.com/maps?hl=en&ll=41.847107,-87.946136&spn=0.004148,0.010568&t=h&z=17&layer=c&cbll=41.847202,-87.948188&panoid=LOirkBvBDnfWZeCzJUYVBg&cbp=12,178.78,,0,8.5.  A slight jog to the left through the intersection.

[kphoger]

Southbound Spring Road at 22nd Street in Oak Brook: http://maps.google.com/maps?hl=en&ll=41.847107,-87.946136&spn=0.004148,0.010568&t=h&z=17&layer=c&cbll=41.847202,-87.948188&panoid=LOirkBvBDnfWZeCzJUYVBg&cbp=12,178.78,,0,8.5.  A slight jog to the left through the intersection.

Hmm, I've passed through that intersection many times, but never straight across 22nd on Spring–I've always either turned onto 22nd, or gone straight through on 22nd.

[texaskdog]

In Austin they do this really well.  The left lane is left only and the right is straight or right, bottling up just about every intersection.

[formulanone]

The intersection of Florida's A1A and Commerical Blvd (FL 870) was bad at this, until recently (circa 2008).

There used to be no dotted lines and flapdoodle bollards, so you seemed stare down opposing traffic when waiting at that intersection, or playing dodge 'em on a green signal.

[Alps]

Jefferson Rd. south of NJ 10, there's a sudden jog in the road for no apparent reason:
https://maps.google.com/maps?hl=en&ll=40.828758,-74.433639&spn=0.000968,0.00228&sll=37.6,-95.665&sspn=33.010768,74.707031&t=k&z=19

[empirestate]

The street view barely illustrates the perception, and the aerial view seems no worse, but at this example the near center lane does tend to want to line up with the far right lane, although the near right lane does also go through.

http://goo.gl/maps/moqCy

Also, somewhat related: near my house there's a two-lane street that goes through a signalized intersection. They recently installed an island on the far side of the intersection, taking up part of the left through-lane as it was then striped. This led to a few weeks of jockeying for position (more so than usual in an outer NYC borough...), but the other day they finally re-striped the lanes so that two go through again.