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| | ==Explanation== | | ==Explanation== |
| − | | + | {{incomplete|Created by a BOT - Please change this comment when editing this page. Do NOT delete this tag too soon.}} |
| − | {{w|Highway}}s are large roads designated for high-speed traffic. Like in [[253: Highway Engineer Pranks]], [[Randall]] proposes an ineffective highway design, which reportedly got him fired. | |
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| − | Highways normally have several, but not a fixed number of lanes; more lanes may be included on parts of the highway with higher traffic flow, and the design decision can interact with entrances and exits to the highway. One common structure is to merge a lane from the right to the left after an entrance, to remove the extra lane created by the merge of the entry ramp. Drivers are expected to merge into one of the lanes further left before the lane on the right ends.
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| − | Here, Randall has designed a highway where the lanes are not aligned to the road, thus constantly expanding to the left and requiring merges from the right. This is highly impractical, as each individual lane merge is a difficult maneuver compared to normal driving; being forced to perform these near-constantly is a large hindrance at the least and a large danger at the most.
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| − | Effectively every car would have to drive with their left turn blinker on constantly in order to drive in a regular straight line. Alternatively cars could stage their lane changes which would make them swerve gently back and forth across the road. Since everyone will choose a different strategy, the road would be chaos. People would almost never try to make a right lane change since lanes to the right end sooner.
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| − | While considerably less extreme, a section of U.S. 101 "North" (which is actually traveling west) in southern California is somewhat like this. The road is four lanes [https://maps.app.goo.gl/T2nVHmojqwSTkxceA when crossing over I-405], with an additional lane immediately entering on the right from I-405 South, but three of these lanes become exit only lanes in the San Fernando Valley (at Haskell Avenue, Havenhurst Avenue, and Topanga Canyon Blvd) and two in Ventura County (one in Thousand Oaks and one in Ventura), so all through traffic must merge into the two lanes that enter on the left carrying traffic from I-405 North.
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| − | The title text refers to local {{w|magnetic declination}}, the angle between the magnetic north pole and the true (geographic) north pole. This is almost always not aligned with road directions, so lanes following it would slant across the road as in this comic. In addition, magnetic declination varies over time due to {{w|polar wander|polar wandering}}, so the lane markers on the highway would need to be regularly updated.
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| | ==Transcript== | | ==Transcript== |
| − | :[In a white panel a black road starts at the bottom left and curves gently towards the right until the middle of the panel, where it begins curving slightly to the left ending in the top right corner. The road has space for four lanes divided by lane markers, but the markers does not follow the direction of the road but goes more from left to right than the road, even though they do follow the general curve of the road, but never the actual direction of the road. This results in all these lanes to end near the right edge of the road. Every time the lane gets too near the edge the lane lines stop and on the end of the lane there is a curving arrow pointing left. Below the arrows the word "Merge" is written. This happens seven times on this small patch of highway. At the bottom and top there are the lane marker lines entering and exiting, so there are always four lanes. After the three starting at the bottom, seven new ones begin, the last just below the top, where the final merge arrow also is, stopping the last of the right lines from exiting at the top.]
| + | {{incomplete transcript|Do NOT delete this tag too soon.}} |
| − | :Merge
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| − | :Merge
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| − | :Merge
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| − | :Merge
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| − | :Merge
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| − | :Merge
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| − | :Merge
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| − | :[Caption below the panel:]
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| − | :I got fired from my traffic engineering job for building a highway where you could only travel by lane changes.
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| − | ==Trivia==
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| − | * A faint grey outline is visible under the caption, as if text was rewritten over a semitransparent layer, which was never deleted.
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| | {{comic discussion}} | | {{comic discussion}} |
| − | [[Category:Engineering]]
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