Another POS garbage intersection the design that Taichung city still has yet to do anything about. Passes by YiZhong night market, Taichung First. Sr. High School and Taichung University of Science and Technology. Busy road lots of traffic.
Video on threads of someone showing them with a green straight arrow being hit by a car turning left from the oncoming traffic side who has a regular round green signal.
Going towards Taichung park there is a dedicated turn lane with a left turn only phase. This is often filled with quite a few buses turning towards the train station area.
The problem is the other side has a regular green light…meaning they can make a left turn whenever and there is no dedicated left turn lane. It’s impossible to see any oncoming traffic due to the large number of buses. Add on the much larger amount of traffic going towards Taichung park it is not uncommon to have to wait until the light changes red before you can turn, seriously impeding through traffic and resulting in drivers/riders behind turning vehicles often forcing their way into the outer lane and causing accidents or near misses or seriously slowing down traffic in attempts to go around.
What’s really stupid is it’s so easy to fix. Looking again at the side going to the park (with the dedicated left turn lane) the outer lane is just one big outer lane and after crossing the intersection it turns into 3 lanes! The fix is as simple as taking the inner lane and turn about a third or a half of it into a dedicated turn lane on the other side and have the other side with a dedicated turn only phase as well.
Significantly safer, significantly smoother flow of traffic, plenty of road space to easily make adjustments. Literally no reason not to do. So the answer is to not do it.
Also as a fun note the inner lane here in this last image used to have a road marking for banning motorcycles…as you can see that’s no longer there so surely that must mean you can make a regular left turn like a regular person in any country right? Nope, here’s a hook turn sign right up at the intersection to screw you over.
What’s even funnier is this spot used to be even dumber…a few years ago the inner lane used to have a straight only arrow…then 50-60m up ahead it’s a left turn only arrow.
