Zipper Merge Demonstration

I don't think it would really matter in reality, because people aren't going to let you in that easily and unless they give you ample space it's hard to tell if they are going to let you in, if you wait until the last minute... and then their is a bunch of people behind you waiting until the last minute too in this situation. It's still the same amount of cars going from 2 lanes to 1 lane so it's going to slow down a little bit there's double the amount of traffic on it and double the amount of slow drivers!

Ngl I'm from. Wisconsin and never heard of a zipper merge b4

Good luck getting drivers to do this on I-95.

This is the dumbest concept I have ever seen and clearly is illogical in the real world

This only works at Chic-Fil-A.

If someone is merging that close to another car that car has to hit their breaks to create space. That is not demonstrated in this simulation. Also in a perfect early merge situation there are no people getting in front of everyone at the merge point. Why demonstrate a zipper merge where everyone is fully cooperating and not do the same for early merging.

The problem with your argument against early merging is that you have jerks who don't want to let you in. "You shall not pass" attitude.

This will only truly work once automated vehicles run the show. Too many a-holes out there for this to work.

The problem with this is someone’s not riding your bumper

Problem is everybody loves to tailgate eachother for no reason, theres never enough space to merge unless someone nice lets you into their lane.

its called zipper merging and it's the way you're supposed to drive

Dumb fucking video

This never works the assholes will speed up and cut you off lol

You can literally go at 200 mph if you just go in a line and not zipper merge

whomever thinks this works in the real world is an over educated buffoon

This model is downright misleading. You conveniently do not show anything after the merge. Assuming the traffic before the merge is practicing a safe following distance, the traffic immediately after the merge is now dangerously close together. What would then happen is that the cars merging would have to slow down to create safe following distance, and so the car behind them also slows down, and the car behind them, and the car behind them, so on and so forth until creating the backup we see at every lane constriction ever. The bottom line is this: there is a maximum number of cars per minute that can pass through the construction zone at a given speed and maintaining safe following distance. How soon the vehicles merge before or after has no bearing on this. If six cars per second can travel through at highway speeds and maintaining safe following distance, merging sooner or later will have no bearing on how quickly 600 cars can pass through.

“ but other people don’t do it” So what. Just because other people are idiots doesn’t mean you have to practice their stupidity…. Zipper merge. Only people prevent other people from zipper merging people with fragile egos and are absolutely fucking stupid..

Yeah right. Everyone would be slamming on their breaks. They should just get over early like the rest of us smh.

I’d rather get to where I’m going slower than do this tbh. We don’t live in a perfect world unfortunately

Make this law

Not much pisses me off more than this demonstration. This demonstration clearly assumes everyone drives selflessly which we all know is not the case. Waiting until the last second to merge causes more problems in the real world because your not always going to be let in which creates a bottleneck. Just effing merge when you see the first opportunity not to slow down traffic.

Wheres the truck?. Wheres the bus?

I think the issue here is when people try to pass a bunch of cars using the ending lane and then try to barge into the other line. Rubs people the wrong way.

Okay it may be faster but how am i gonna inflate my ego if im not the line leader?????

I would get so nervous if a car suddenly merged only one meter away😅

Issue is you have people merging too soon which is why you have increased congestion when you have that empty space. Then when you try to merge at the last second like a zipper merge, there are those few times where the individual doesn't want to let you on. So either you hit their car or the orange cone.

This is wishful thinking perhaps

Its lie, becouse at the last case car per minute was like 3 times higer in bottle neck from middlle case, so this video totally manipulating, and zipp merge in real life one of the problems thats make traffic, because in one line you can easilly make 35 ml/h throowput but with zipping 20 will be like amazing.

But this animation assumes an instant merge, if you have two miles notice if every gets over in light to moderate traffic there is NO slow down

Soo, based on the video, the cars are spaced out perfectly to merge every time…aside from that being laughable in real life, wouldn’t traffic flow the exact same if all the cars were single file from the beginning? Not waiting until the last minute? If you just slide the right lane into the left lane in the video, it fits perfectly and wouldn’t slow traffic at all lol

yeah people don't leave that much space in front of them though

Not only the drivers in the open lane have to cooperate, but the drivers on the blocked lane have to play it right. What I see the most is one of the lanes having a "smart" driver that wants to do the "Squeeze". The "Squeeze" driver wants to close in on the car in front and let nobody in. It can get to the point that the "Squeeze" driver in riding in the "vacuum" of the car in front. Should the car in front touch the brakes, there will be a rear end collision. There should be cooperation between the drivers on both lanes. The other aspect is when one pulls in front and fails to accelerate. These drivers are, afraid, don't care or are clueless. If somebody let's you in, bring your vehicle up to speed ASAP and once the blockage is over move back to your lane and keep going. The overall quality of 80% to 90% the drivers on the road, in my opinion, is very poor. They are clueless as to what is required for safe driving. They drive in a mindless disconnected way, I don't think they are able to comprehend that their lives and the lives of others depended on their actions. Numbers don't lie about, 37,000 killed and some 6M accidents per year in the US alone. I would call that a major failure.

The cause of the congestion usually comes well after the merge point. And only a certain number of cars can pass thru it at any given time, regardless of how they merged before the got there.
The zipper just turns one long line into two shorter ones that may not block the ramps.
But it is definitely not faster.

it doesnt matter if the merge occurs at the last moment, what matters is that people leave enough space in front to allow others to merge, and for those that need to merge, they need to take the first available opportunity to merge. Drivers who fly past 10 merging opportunities just to get to the front of the line are creating more traffic congestion than is needed. Maintain appropriate spacing, merge when the space appears. Don't fly down the right or left lane unless you can see a space ahead to merge into.

traffic will flow fastest when braking is minimised.

In a world where unicorns and leprechauns frolic, this works.

It’s cute that they think people are capable of this kind of cooperation. It’s almost like they have never driven on i25

My experience is that in congested conditions, the speed of the single post-merge lane is the limiting factor in how many cars can get through the road. I suspect this means that there's no merging strategy that actually speeds people up: as long as the two lanes together are at least as congested as the post-merge lane is, getting to the front faster would just mean waiting longer to merge at a spacing that the single lane can tolerate.

wishful thinking.

You are asking far too much coordination from humans who are likely in a tremendous hurry and road raging. Even when people are behaving correctly, they're still not robots.

When will Americans realize that the only way to reduce traffic congestion is to build working public transport? And by that I don't mean having a bus that is just constantly stuck in traffic like everyone else.

PEOPLE DO NOT ZIPPER MERGE!

This is if robots drove, realistically this is not feasible and is ridiculous to promote.

The question is, when your lane is ending... are you most interested in all of us getting where we need to go most efficiently, or are you most interested in getting ahead of as many people as possible?

It mobes even smoother if people merge further back instead of creating a probkem at the last minute. They can wait in line like the rest of us.

Doug is the type of guy who would share a link to a zipper merge demonstration video.

What an absolute load of bullshit. Isn't it amazing how traffic ahead of the obstruction just magically starts moving faster when the same amount of cars are trying to make it through. I don't know who came up with this nonsense, but it's not based on any studies or testing.

Only works if the people on the lane that’s moving LET YOU PASS, if not, you’re just going to be stuck there at the end and congest traffic on that lane. Embrace the suck and sit in traffic, merge in early. You don’t have anywhere important to be.

I had to look this up. Some no doubt “hard-working” woman in a minivan pushed me out within half an inch to not let me merge. Right in front of state troopers who did nothing.

Zipper Merge is NOT efficient. They purposeless obfuscate the issue by saying people could be blocking intersections and exits if they don't move forward. Well, OBVIOUSLY if you are blocking an intersection or exit and there is an empty lane in front of you, then you should move forward. That's not rocket science. But if you go all the way to the very end before merging, you are cutting in front of people and making traffic worse for everyone. If you have 20 cars in a straight line vs two lines of 10 cars alternating, those 20 cars will get through while the two lanes of 10 are still on the 4th or 5th car. Because every single alternation is happening slowly. Once everyone gets in a straight line, it moves much quicker. So sick of people acting like they are intelligent because they listened to a "study" about zipper merge. You are not intelligent. You are wrong.

Since we are showing fantasy demonstration’s, I should point out that the same efficiency could be achieved if everybody merged early. If you take the completely unrealistic expectation that humans behave like computers, nice and polite, then It doesn’t matter if you merge early or if you merge late. The demonstration is biased against the early merge because they are showing cars in the left lane leaving no gaps which forces congestion.

Nah sorry if you go into the lane that’s gonna end up until it does you don’t deserve to be let in you can gfy