03-26-2015, 03:04 PM
My jury is still out whether the new system is any better or worse than before. I did the Keaau Crawl the other day at less than 10 MPH and after the lanes were merged the single lane traffic was only going 20 MPH well past Shower. It eventually got up to about 30. Two lanes merging into a 20 MPH lane is going to be slow. I don't know why the traffic was so slow- there wasn't anything to rubberneck at. Other days, the new system seems to work great.
My observations: 1) After the merge, people need to drive faster. 2) On the mainland where there is no aloha, nobody would ever dream of letting somebody into their lane if they knew the merge was coming up for miles but waited until the last 50 feet of lane to do it. They ride each others arses to keep them out and punish such behavior. Mainland traffic mentality design / mitigation doesn't work here. Normally that's a great thing (no road rage) but when nobody uses 2 miles of merge lane because they think they can "get ahead 5 car lengths" and cause a bottleneck at the end...
ETA: grammar
My observations: 1) After the merge, people need to drive faster. 2) On the mainland where there is no aloha, nobody would ever dream of letting somebody into their lane if they knew the merge was coming up for miles but waited until the last 50 feet of lane to do it. They ride each others arses to keep them out and punish such behavior. Mainland traffic mentality design / mitigation doesn't work here. Normally that's a great thing (no road rage) but when nobody uses 2 miles of merge lane because they think they can "get ahead 5 car lengths" and cause a bottleneck at the end...
ETA: grammar