Turn Lanes / Flush Median
Another type of center two-way lane is a center left-turn lane (for countries which drive on the right), center turn lane or median turn lane, a single lane in the center of the road into which traffic from both directions pulls to make a left turn. While this is sometimes also called a "suicide lane", it is actually far safer, as traffic collisions occur at far lower speeds.
These roads are very common in suburban areas and less common in rural areas, though developed areas near Interstate Highways bypasses of a small city often have them. Many were divided highways before the median was demolished or otherwise filled with the turn lane. Many four-lane streets with a double-yellow line are being phased out in favor of five-lane streets with center turn lanes, because the center lane allows for less disruption of traffic flow. For routes with moderate traffic, other movements involve downgrading four-lane undivided streets to three-lane streets with a turn-only center lane.
This center lane can be used by emergency vehicles like police cars, ambulance, and fire trucks to avoid traffic traveling in either direction. Drivers are not allowed to use the center lane of such a highway for passing slow-moving vehicles, except when funding or space constraints dictate use of it as a rush hour "travel lane" when traffic is largely asymmetric between a central business district and its suburbs.
Read more about this topic: Reversible Lane
Famous quotes containing the words turn, lanes and/or flush:
“As the end of the century approaches, all our culture is like the culture of flies at the beginning of winter. Having lost their agility, dreamy and demented, they turn slowly about the window in the first icy mists of morning. They give themselves a last wash and brush-up, their ocellated eyes roll, and they fall down the curtains.”
—Jean Baudrillard (b. 1929)
“freeways fifty lanes wide
on a concrete continent
spaced with bland billboards
illustrating imbecile illusions of happiness”
—Lawrence Ferlinghetti (b. 1919)
“F.R. Leavis’s “eat up your broccoli” approach to fiction emphasises this junkfood/wholefood dichotomy. If reading a novel—for the eighteenth century reader, the most frivolous of diversions—did not, by the middle of the twentieth century, make you a better person in some way, then you might as well flush the offending volume down the toilet, which was by far the best place for the undigested excreta of dubious nourishment.”
—Angela Carter (1940–1992)