This is silly... Is there some road striping service looking for a government contract? It could be an asphalt cost cutting idea.
If you believe in the supposed power of law, written by millenia of dead people that have never dreamed of living in our world, then you could just write another "law" commanding all bicyclists to ride in the middle of the lane for their safety and public safety...
There is merit to narrow lanes and wide lanes. It's the uniformity that kills. I stare at road lanes all day long. Ideas of narrower and wider lanes has occured to me. Why not have both? When i carry wide-loads, the best strategy is to travel in the right-most lane and overhang into the shoulder for normal clearance/psycho-visual spacing for other vehicles in the passing lanes.
On interstate highways, the emergency/shoulder lane goes unused for miles except for occassional emergency vehicle travel and the frequent break-down car waiting for it's owner's next paycheck to cover towing or roadside repair expenses.
On town streets, where foot traffic is more prevalent, I've noticed that striping is used to subdivide a typical 12 foot lane into a medium and smaller lane for car and foot/pedal traffic.
On city streets, I've notice 2 major types of roads. The most common 2-lane, 2-way rural/city road and the 3-lane, 2-way city street with the single, middle, "suicide/unprotected" lane with combined 2-direction turning and limited travel with occasional striping at intersections to regulate to middle lane into 1-direction left/turning lanes.
On some New Jersey roads, I've notice a middle ground design between interstate highways and city streets. This road design eliminates the central turning/travel/suicide lane which also eliminates all left-hand turns. To restore full navigation, the left turns are replaced at major intersections with right exit lanes leading to small loop lanes which merge the traffic onto the perpendicular intersecting roadway to accomplish the left turns and u-turns together with the intersecting thru traffic at the signalized intersection.
Many city streets have curbing or curb with guttering to handle the travel of water away from the travelway surfaces. Miles and miles of concrete go unused except for the occasional rainstorm or the secondary purpose of increased traffic regulation serving as a mild form of traffic control for protecting adjacent sidewalks/pedestrians, utility easements or landscaping against unwanted vehicle travel or departure from the paved travelway.
Along most roadways, sidewalks are often neglected if not ignored completely on one or both sides of the roads. Due to extreme costs of building and maintaining roadways, pedestrian travel always suffer at the hand of vehicular "progress", and it's even illegal in some areas with "No Walking" signs at busy interchanges. However, walking is the QUEEN OF TRAVEL! She should be respected much more than she is.
What if... Now hear me out... What if we could combine all of these ideas into more coherent forms of travel improvements for EVERYONE and not just vehicles? What commonalities between different road corridors can be improved or combined? What is your favorite typical road section? Do we need massive swaths of land on both sides AND the center of interstate highways just to contain the rare vehicle that departs from the established travelway? Can we maximize the effectiveness of travelways by exploiting differences in profile and elevation? The streets of tomorrow are just waiting to be designed! Will you be the one that improves the quality of life for billions of people all over the world?
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