Posted Oct 25, 2020, 12:33 AM
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(daka_x)
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Join Date: Aug 2010
Location: Metro Vancouver, Canada
Posts: 1,745
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To be fair the design would follow highway design guidelines in many other places. Of course a right-hand merge is also better than a left-hand one, and the previous left-hand merge east of 200th Street might have had safety issues of its own.
The problem here I think is the lack of understanding of local context. A lot of the people who are now exiting at 216th weren't necessarily the people who were continuing further to 232nd/Highway 10. The through traffic volume is thus the same west and east of 216th, and a lot of the through traffic is truck traffic, which is challenging to handle when there are high traffic volumes that warranted 3-4 lanes long ago already.
I think an even better (if somewhat impractical) solution would be to have drivers to make their lane changing decisions over a far longer distance - i.e. prior to reaching the 216th Street interchange. That is, the HOV lane is terminated earlier, and the rightmost lane approaching 216th becomes exit only. 216th onramp merges onto two eastbound lanes. The capacity is reduced, and that may pose challenges of its own, but by all means it would seem to be safer - esp. given it's a configuration that would only remain in place for a couple of years until widening is complete.
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