I don’t know about you guys, but the teeth an my zipper are lined up ahaid of time and “traveling” the same speed. I would be fine with zipper merge if that where the case, but every time i am in the open lane and the other one closes there are 10 jerks who sped to the end and now feel i should have to come to a full stop and let all 10 get in front. Also, my zipper gets joined at the botom and the “merge” point travels back up the the path. we are all going to sqeeze into one lane anyway. Don’t care where it happens as long as everyone maintains speed. If you expect me to stop my lane so 10 can come from yours we have a problem.
If everyone stayed in the lane that’s about to close, your scenario wouldn’t happen. The issue isn’t the people going all the way to the end to merge, it’s everyone merging beforehand that causes the backup.
Traffic waves in that scenario come from people merging. If everyone merged at the end, there would be a small, consistent slowdown there. One small wave being reinforced over time. But, because everyone in the lane about to close merges as soon as they can, there are dozens of waves being generated all at once, which causes the stop-and-go effect. And as the backup becomes worse, more people start merging earlier, causing even more waves and more backup.
It’s taught, but the concept is counter-intuitive, goes against American etiquette for queuing, and puts all of the risk for getting stuck on the driver doing the correct thing (going all the way down to the merge).
The queue is not the lane closing. The queue is the through-traffic. The people racing to the front of an already full queue ARE NOT ZIPPER MERGING. They’re cutting in line.
The point of a zipper merge is to do it cleanly without affecting others’ speeds as much as possible. Flying to the front of a line is not matching speed, and it’s not merging cleanly.
Then it’s not properly taught. You’re still queuing, and if everyone is taught how to do it correctly and is executing it correctly, it works well and everybody gets their turn. Hell, you don’t even need everybody to do it correctly, just most people.
If people don’t fully understand the concept enough to recognize that they are still in line and get their turn, then they were not taught the concept correctly or are not smart enough to be driving a vehicle.
If things are flowing properly and maintaining proper space both lanes would be combining at the end where the closed lane cuts off, they would be moving at the same speed by necessity. No one would have space to zoom to the end because it would be occupied.
I don’t know about you guys, but the teeth an my zipper are lined up ahaid of time and “traveling” the same speed. I would be fine with zipper merge if that where the case, but every time i am in the open lane and the other one closes there are 10 jerks who sped to the end and now feel i should have to come to a full stop and let all 10 get in front. Also, my zipper gets joined at the botom and the “merge” point travels back up the the path. we are all going to sqeeze into one lane anyway. Don’t care where it happens as long as everyone maintains speed. If you expect me to stop my lane so 10 can come from yours we have a problem.
If everyone stayed in the lane that’s about to close, your scenario wouldn’t happen. The issue isn’t the people going all the way to the end to merge, it’s everyone merging beforehand that causes the backup.
Traffic waves in that scenario come from people merging. If everyone merged at the end, there would be a small, consistent slowdown there. One small wave being reinforced over time. But, because everyone in the lane about to close merges as soon as they can, there are dozens of waves being generated all at once, which causes the stop-and-go effect. And as the backup becomes worse, more people start merging earlier, causing even more waves and more backup.
The issue is that in backed up traffic, not zipper merging results in a single lane of cars that takes up twice as much road space as zipper merging.
Perhaps the issue is zipper merging not being taught in drivers ed, idk.
It’s taught, but the concept is counter-intuitive, goes against American etiquette for queuing, and puts all of the risk for getting stuck on the driver doing the correct thing (going all the way down to the merge).
The queue is not the lane closing. The queue is the through-traffic. The people racing to the front of an already full queue ARE NOT ZIPPER MERGING. They’re cutting in line.
The point of a zipper merge is to do it cleanly without affecting others’ speeds as much as possible. Flying to the front of a line is not matching speed, and it’s not merging cleanly.
Then it’s not properly taught. You’re still queuing, and if everyone is taught how to do it correctly and is executing it correctly, it works well and everybody gets their turn. Hell, you don’t even need everybody to do it correctly, just most people.
If people don’t fully understand the concept enough to recognize that they are still in line and get their turn, then they were not taught the concept correctly or are not smart enough to be driving a vehicle.
If things are flowing properly and maintaining proper space both lanes would be combining at the end where the closed lane cuts off, they would be moving at the same speed by necessity. No one would have space to zoom to the end because it would be occupied.