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Joined 2 years ago
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Cake day: June 10th, 2023

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  • It DOES NOT matter if it’s done with 3 feet to merge or 300 feet to merge. There’s no efficiency gain.

    Merging early leaves unused road. Shoving the cars into fewer lanes makes the traffic jam longer and makes it impact more interesections far behind the actual hangup. If you can merge early without slowing down, sure go for it. I’m mostly talking about the scenarios where it’s already slowed to a crawl and people feel like they have to merge early to not be seen as “cutting in line.”

    Edit, also to add, if everyone merges early even at speed, eventually, the car density in the reduced lanes will reach a point where people naturally slow down and you have bumper to bumper traffic.

    I suggest Traffic by Tom Vanderbilt for more.