Tidal Flow
The Expressway was the first road in the United Kingdom to introduce tidal flow to allow better management of traffic. Lane use is controlled by means of electronic overhead signs, with one lane always closed to create a buffer between the two directions of travel – there is no central reservation. In the morning, four of the seven lanes are designated for use by traffic heading toward Birmingham city centre, and two lanes for traffic out of the city. In the evening rush hour, this pattern is reversed and four lanes are made available to outbound traffic and two lanes towards the city centre. At all other times, the road runs with three lanes in each direction.
Motorcycles are banned from the red-surfaced central lane, which contains a drainage channel, regardless of how it is being used. This follows a fatal accident which occurred when one of the drainage covers dislodged.
Read more about this topic: A38(M) Motorway
Famous quotes containing the words tidal and/or flow:
“And now it is once more the tidal wave
That when it was swept by, leaves summits stained.
Oh, blood will out. It cannot be contained.”
—Robert Frost (1874–1963)
“Along the iron veins that traverse the frame of our country, beat and flow the fiery pulses of its exertion, hotter and faster every hour. All vitality is concentrated through those throbbing arteries into the central cities; the country is passed over like a green sea by narrow bridges, and we are thrown back in continually closer crowds on the city gates.”
—John Ruskin (1819–1900)