Disadvantages
- Safety
- Driver confusion, due to left-turns being made from the right side of the roadway — an uncommon configuration outside of the northeastern United States. Expectancy issues may be compounded due to inconsistency between intersections, where some intersections may be jughandles and others may be standard intersections. These issues can be reduced through advance signing.
- Pedestrian conflict is increased along the cross street due to the addition of an additional intersecting approach.
- Creates a higher-speed conflict between vehicles and pedestrians/bicyclists at the divergence point of the jughandle ramp.
- Operations
- Increased travel time and delay for left-turning motorists redirected through jughandle.
- Increased overall percentage of vehicles stopped at the intersection.
- Potential for queues along the cross street to block the exit terminal of the jughandle, increasing stops, delays, and travel time of left-turning motorists.
- With reverse jughandles, motorists travel through the intersection twice: adding to the net movement demand.
- Motorists wishing to perform a U-turn maneuver at a reverse jughandle must perform a weaving maneuver across all cross-street lanes to travel from the jughandle terminus to the left-turn lane (unless another reverse jughandle is located on the other corner on the side of the cross street ahead of the motorist's original direction, in which case the motorist stays on the right but must cross through the intersection three times).
- To provide for motorist safety, the Federal Highway Administration recommends locating transit stops further from the intersection, outside of the jughandle ramps. This can reduce pedestrian demand due to the additional travel distance to access the transit stop.
- "Type A" standard forward jughandles can encourage drivers to try beating (bypassing) the stopped redlight traffic by driving into the jughandle, turning left, and then turning right onto the original roadway to proceed in the original direction of travel prior to that roadway's light turning green again and releasing the stopped traffic.
- Right-of-way
- Additional right-of-way may be required alongside the roadway, unless the existing street network can be utilized.
Read more about this topic: Jughandle