Does your city have ramp meters?

[xrtn2]

Porto alegre BRAZIL

[diablo234]

Are you sure that is a ramp meter?

That looks like a simple traffic light setup to me.

[Desertstorm]

Melbourne does on some of its freeways. They're meant to ease congestion on the freeway itself, but IMO they just create another problem, often the queue of traffic waiting to get on the freeway stretches right back to the start of the ramp and you can be waiting 5-10 minutes and can obstruct the surface street if traffic is particularly bad. Basically an identical design to the U.S. system. Here they only operate when traffic is heavy though, so outside of peak periods they are switched off thank god.

Originally Posted by WonderlandPark

What is weird, here in Southern California is a ramp meters are installed on transitions to other freeways/motorways. So you exit a freeway to join another and there is a ramp meter in between.

Originally Posted by diablo234

When I visited Minneapolis a while back I also noticed they had ramp meters at freeway/freeway interchanges. I am not sure if those are effective compared with having ramp meters on interchanges with secondary streets/roads.

that sucks! They haven't done that here, we only have them on freeway to surface street interchanges, and not every freeway has them.

Are they switched on only in peak hour in other countries like here, or constantly regardless of traffic volume/time of day?

[diablo234]

Originally Posted by Desertstorm

that sucks! They haven't done that here, we only have them on freeway to surface street interchanges, and not every freeway has them.

Are they switched on only in peak hour in other countries like here, or constantly regardless of traffic volume/time of day?

In Minneapolis and most other US cities they are only used during rush hour, otherwise they are turned off or they just have a yellow flashing light which means they can proceed without stopping.

[ChrisZwolle]

Ramp meters only make sense when the motorway is operating over, at or near capacity. Although hourly traffic volumes off-peak are actually not that much lower than during peak hour, they don't require ramp metering. Ramp metering is visible proof a motorway does not function properly. Motorway capacity is only marginally improved with ramp metering, but the lack of columns of vehicles merging at the time improves traffic flow. However, it is known that some ramp meters cause unacceptable delays at on-ramps (15 - 20 minutes or even longer is not unheard of).

[myosh_tino]

When the West Valley Freeway (California State Route 85) was built from south San Jose to Cupertino in 1994, it was the first freeway to feature metering lights (that's what we call them) on all on-ramps including freeway-to-freeway ramps. After the freeway was opened, the complaints came pouring in about having to wait to enter highway 85, especially on the northbound US 101 ramp to northbound highway 85 in south San Jose. A local newspaper columnist writes...

Back in 1994 and 1995, I tested the meters on Highway 85, and the result was impressive...

* With all meters off, the 25-mile-plus commute from South San Jose to Mountain View took nearly an hour.

* With the freeway-to-freeway meters off and the meters on city streets turning red to green as fast as possible: 45 minutes. That included no wait on the ramp from 101 to 85 in San Jose.

* When the meters were all turned on and slowed down as Caltrans designed, the entire commute — including a five-minute-plus wait at the 101 to 85 ramp — took 33 minutes.

[Squiggles]

Madison has a few ramp meters on the Beltline around the south side. They seem pretty pointless though; if you know how to merge, they seem rather unnecessary.

[poshbakerloo]

I know in the UK they use them on a lot of the roundabout interchanges to help with the cross traffic

[keokiracer]

In The Nethelands we've got a lot of them, but this one is special: from highway to highway!
Exact location (green arrow)



They don't use it anymore since shoulder running was allowed op the A9. Further down the road there used to be another one (A205). It's still there I think, but it's never actually working anymore.

There used to be one here (green arrow again) too, but that one is gone