This is a major Roadguy peeve:

As you can perhaps see from my CrapCam photo, the right lane was not closed — the orange barrels had been moved off 28th Street and were out of the way. Yet the workers couldn’t have walked a whole block to turn the sign sideways? Here’s a similar scene, also from this summer, on Nicollet Avenue:

Actually, the left lane was wide open. (I drove a few blocks, just to check.) Part of the right lane on the other side of the street was blocked off, which is sort of like the left lane being closed. But not really.

This kind of thing happens often enough that, when I see a “lane closed” sign, I think, “Hmm, is it really?” and I sometimes wait before moving over. This isn’t good — if drivers switch lanes unnecessarily, or if they don’t move when they should, it’s both a safety issue and a congestion issue. I think our orange signs should do better than mere truthiness.

This entry was posted on Monday, September 25th, 2006 at 6:15 am and is filed under Construction junction, WUWT?. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.