Bloody hell. So much merging and switching of lanes. There would broken bits of car everywhere. The only upside would be the ability of bikes to go past the gridlock that would happen at a certain density of traffic. Also, why do so many people in the animation need to U-turn?

This design is an abomination really, there'd be so many accidents around the merging, where the traffic streams effectively have to swap over.

Because, you know, cars and car infrastructure don't already take up massive amounts of space as is.

The only defence of this is that it would take LESS space than some kind of cloverleaf system. I think this whole design is trying to be space efficient whilst attemptign to keep traffic flowing (which it wouldn't do).

@destructdisc LOL, this is like a very fucked up roundabout. It takes way more space and is way more dangerous.

This only works if drivers take the u-turns at full speed. The first driver slows down to 10 km/h for the u-turn, and the whole thing gets backed up to the point merging is impossible, and it becomes worse than a 4-way light.

Around my area we have combination highway on ramps and exits where the lane for getting on immediately becomes the next exit. They are incredibly stressful and dangerous given just a tiny bit of traffic, everybody is frantically trying to merge on and off a short strip and accidents happen all the time. This intersection turns the entire road into that design lmao, they're off their ass if they really think this design is any good

This is just a flattened highway interchange.

Also, holy shit so many combination enter/exit lanes, so many potential points of high-velocity conflict!

What do these folks have against roundabouts?

This is just a roundabout with a way for drivers to bail out and turn around before entering the roundabout

Because fuck pedestrians, right?

That's just a big roundabout

So a roundabout for Americans?

This looks like something RealCivilEngineer would do for a bit, lol. I think I see a bit of the strongest shape in there.

Those 180° turns look way too tight for semi-trailer trucks. Even the vans are drifting there.

And all those single lanes, merging, and tight turns are a recipe for congestion.

A proper roundabout would work much better, waste less concrete, and probably take up less space.

Thoughtful of them to provide extra U turns so that people approaching this monstrosity can nope the fuck out.

Already exists in better.

This would gridlock so fast. Actually I think it would gridlock so incredibly hard that cars would end up abandoned after they ran out of gas from how long they were stuck.

This looks like hell...

It's only one lane of traffic either way and you've got to merge in and out of two separate traffic flows in a short distance just to go 'straight' through to the other side.

Well this is a very roundabout way of getting places

looks to be firmly 'in theory'

It’s wonderful yes but relies on people leaving space to allow zippering.

Unfortunately everyone is a bastard and goes bumper to bumper.

Seen from a traffic planning perspective, these lane changes alone would cause more incidents than 10% of drivers running a red light crossing.

I used to commute an hour to work every day, each way, and the worst part was cross-merging traffic, exactly like there are 4 of in this design.

This was obviously designed with the assumption that people know how to drive without getting in one another's way.

Median U-Turn (MUT) Intersection?

…and yes they are as confusing as they look.

Uh-huh.

This is not traffic free. This does not account for the vast majority of people who don't know how to drive or merge on a highway. This would fail every real world trial. It can be said there is some beauty in its arrogance though.

Edit: this is clearly (hopefully) satire given those U turns of death in the middle of a highway interchange that cannot be used by the one thing that needs it the most for this to be commercially viable: semi trucks.

Edit 2: I just noticed this isn't an interstate highway intersection but just your regular ol state road intersection. I ate the onion... I hope it was satire at least.

summarizes american infrastructure: needlessly massive, dangerous, and helps absolutely fucking no one.

I'm 90% sure this is just Detroit.

if only our world is not 2d, then we could have overpasses and tunnels...

I could see this as a replacement for a highway interchange/cloverleaf. Are we sure it's not intended for that?

As a replacement for a 4-way stoplight intersection, yeah this is nuts.

The gif is kinda soothing to watch if you don't know the context behind it. Then I read the post title and now the gif is nauseating to look at.

Why not just elevate one of the roads and have an exit/entrance for anyone who wants to switch? Having to turn right, merge, fucking u-turn, then immediately merge again just to GO STRAIGHT is the stupidest fucking thing.