The TexasHighwayMan has an excellent overview of a proposal to create a “Super Street” in San Antonio, Texas. Even if you aren’t into transit, it’s worth a read because you can see how a street is reworked to help move people to their destinations faster. I’ve come across a number of these super streets in the past and always wondered why they were created – now I know.

Basically what a Super-Street rework does is move some of the traffic away to make the intersection more efficient. Here’s an example of the before and after (you need to read the blog post from TexasHighwayMan to get the full grasp of the change):

Here’s the basic explanation of the new layout from the blog post, “The proposed changes eliminate the ability of traffic on the cross-street to continue straight through the intersection or to turn left.  Instead, all traffic on the cross-street must turn right onto 281, then use a downstream turnaround on 281 to either go the opposite direction or to return to the cross-street.  The proposal does not eliminate the signalized intersections; in fact, it doubles the number of signals in each direction on 281.  However, by eliminating the straight-through and left turn movements on the cross-street, engineers can make some dramatic changes to the signal phasing.  Specifically, the number of signal phases can be reduced from five to just two and all the signals can work in tandem.”

Tags: Transit News