Highway 401 Widening - Highway 8 to Townline Road

[SammyOES]

I'm not a traffic engineer, but the consensus seems to be that a zipper merge is more efficient during periods of congestion:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I-Xe-uxIeXg

I've done a lot of reading and debating about this for a long time now, and I believe the general consensus is that its not particularly more efficient from a throughput at the bottleneck point of view. As in, most of the time the reason there's a big long line of cars is that there's a bottleneck ahead that can't support that many cars - and so a line forms. The shape/dynamics of that line don't generally have a significant affect on how many cars get through the bottleneck.

BUT, there are a whole crapload of benefits to the zipper merge:

* It's way more fair. If everyone did it, there's no legal way for somebody at the back to jump forward a significant number of cars.
* Being more fair leads to a decrease in road rage incidents. People don't have to sit there fuming while they think they're being polite and getting in line while others are being 'rude' and jumping to the front.
* It's way more efficient for other non-related traffic. It's not as relevant in the case we're talking about, but in other cases one long single line of cars can have a much larger impact on other non-related traffic (blocking side roads, previous intersections, etc.) than a half/length double wide line of cars.
* There are less accidents. Merging happens at a single point in a defined way where everybody expects it to happen.

So please people, ZIPPER MERGE!