City urges drivers to zipper merge
When two lanes of traffic become one, zipper merging is the correct thing to do. But for some reason, Windsor motorists just aren’t getting it.
Next week, the City of Windsor’s traffic department will be putting zipper-merge signs on the E. C. Row Expressway in an attempt to convince local drivers to adopt the merging method.
“We actually did a merging campaign back in 2009, because of a construction project on the E. C. Row,” noted Dwayne Dawson, the city’s director of operations.
“(The campaign) was not that successful, to be quite honest. It was just the driving habits of the people — trying to break them was problematic.”
If you’re not familiar with it, the zipper merge is what traffic scientists widely consider the safest and most efficient way for vehicles to enter a bottleneck: Drivers should delay merging until their lane actually ends. Then, at the point of the bottleneck, vehicles from each lane take turns entering — an arrangement that ideally resembles the teeth of a zipper.
Unfortunately, most Windsor motorists don’t do that. Instead, they merge early. Sometimes very early — more than a kilometre before the merger point.
That’s just wrong, according to Dawson and others responsible for city operations.
“Right now, a lot of people are merging quite far back from the construction zone, creating a long, single line,” Dawson said. “It leaves an unused lane.”
Dawson met with traffic managers on Thursday morning to discuss the city’s latest zipper-merge education efforts. A new series of zipper-merge signs is in the process of being designed.
Next week, four signs will be strategically placed on the E. C. Row Expressway. They’ll urge drivers to continue to utilize both lanes until the merger point.
A section of the expressway between Howard Avenue and Walker Road is currently reduced to one lane of traffic in each direction due to repair work on the bridge over Conservation Drive. The lane reduction will be necessary for the duration of the project, which won’t be finished until at least Aug. 14.
“If everybody moves at a relatively consistent speed and leaves proper space, they should be able to blend together,” Dawson said.
But it’s been eight years since the city’s last campaign on the zipper merge, and the method still hasn’t sunk in with Windsor motorists.
Part of the problem may be the “road crusader” mentality: Drivers who merge early often don’t want to let in later mergers. Some drivers will even position their vehicles in the middle of both lanes to prevent others from moving ahead to the merger point — presumably out of some misguided sense of justice.
Dawson is all too familiar with the phenomenon. “It happened to me (Wednesday),” he said with a small laugh.
“I was getting on at the Walker Road ramp. I came up the ramp slowly and was going to merge at the end of the ramp — but there was a tractor-trailer that was not allowing people past him.”
“Sometimes, when you’re out there, you’ll see different cars or trucks try to block people coming up the lane. It creates a whole issue.”
Walter Bezzina, general manager of Vets Cab, called zipper merging an “excellent idea.”
“If you think about how it’s supposed to work, it’s no different than coming to a (four way) stop,” he said. “Everybody’s got to stop and let everybody in, in accordance.”
Bezzina did warn that for a zipper merge to work, all drivers need to be on board.
“It can’t just be a partial thing,” Bezzina said. “People have to understand it.”
Zipper merging will require a shift in drivers’ thinking, said Teresa Di Felice, director of government and community relations for CAA South Central Ontario.
Di Felice said that drivers who merge early sometimes hesitate to let drivers going until the lane ends into their lane.
“It becomes almost a bit of a judgment, about who is doing the right thing when,” Di Felice said. “(Zipper merging) is basically saying, we need to shift our mind about what’s right and wrong on when to merge. And instead, if everybody uses the two full lanes but provides room so you can alternate cars moving into that lane, everyone will move faster.”
Aiding the flow of traffic was one of the reasons William Gauci wrote a reader letter to the Star, published June 8, in support of zipper merging.
It’s no different than coming to a (four way) stop... Everybody’s got to stop and let everybody in, in accordance
“Right now, you go along the expressway and you literally have people trying to maintain a minimum distance of being right up against the next car, so they don’t have to let someone else in,” he said.
“If everybody just spread out a little bit, and gave a little bit of room and used both lanes, it could move a whole lot quicker and avoid the frustration of sitting in line."