Half a croissant, on a plate, with a sign in front of it saying '50c'
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Clinker-built freeway lanes

Each lane matches one exit
 
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In a city with reasonably straight freeways, create a one-to-one correspondence between lanes and exits. When the freeway enters the city, a new lane opens on the left. The right lane is marked exit-only for the first exit.

This works best with four or more lanes at any given time, on a freeway with single exits for each road (diamond or dual frontage road configurations). I-17 passing through Phoenix is a good candidate, as it has frontage roads with slip lanes, and the exits are every mile.

Of course, this would involve lots of lane changing, but since every mile or so there's a brand new lane, traffic would never really get stuck. If you knew you were going ten miles down the freeway, you would stay left and always have a clear road. Even if you didn't move left consistently, the correct lane would be clearly marked, and you would have three or four miles to get into it. Merging right would become mostly unnecessary.

darksasami, Oct 07 2003

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       I've seen stretches of highway like this, but only 10 miles or so at a time. The problem is that everyone who's not getting off has to keep lane-changing away from the exits. This puts the onus on the wrong group of people and probably won't perform its intended function of getting people into exit lanes well before they have to exit.
phoenix, Oct 07 2003
  

       All too often, we've gotten onto motorways only to get off at the next (or even same) exit, due to set-ups like this. Works fine for people familiar with the route, but not a good practice in general.
DrCurry, Oct 07 2003
  

       It would certainly make the Coventry Inner Ring Road a psychedelic treat for the eyes though!
kmlabs, Nov 30 2004
  

       I dont get the clinker built part. What has Norse inspired wooden boat constrution got to do with this!
etherman, Nov 30 2004
  
      
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