Passing lanes

[CR6ZZ]

A question (and I am prepared to be flamed if some consider it dumb...) : Here in NZ passing lanes are marked as in the first diagram.



However, this to me seems counter-intuitive because the slower cars are encouraged to move into the path of faster cars coming from behind and the traffic stream is encouraged to moved towards the centre of the road (i.e. closer to oncoming traffic. It is about 6 years since I have driven in the UK and Europe but I seem to recall that passing lanes are marked more like diagram 2.



This makes much more sense to me as the faster cars are in more of a position to moderate their speed and merge with slower cars. Also, the opposing streams of traffic are encouraged further apart, at least temporarily. Can someone confirm that my recollection of passing lanes overseas is correct and can any traffic engineer/planner comment on the respective layouts?

[IROC-Z]

I found this strange when I drove in NZ and Australia, it did seem a bit odd because when the passing lane comes to and end slower traffic is forced to merge back in, usually while people are still belting along the passing lane.

Passing lanes in the UK and in Europe are as you describe, i.e. faster traffic has to merge back once the passing lane ends whereas in NZ the opposite is true. I tend to agree with you, the former makes more sense because the onus is on the passing vehicles to safely merge back in with the flow of traffic.

[Sam.F]

The passing lanes on US route 64 up from Williams, Arizona to the Grand Canyon are similarly configured, I found a lot of the time though that slower traffic stayed left (i.e. did not change lanes) and the faster traffic just used the right lane to pass - pretty sure that was not the way it was designed but I encountered at least 3 or 4 people bimbling along in what one would expect to be the passing lane. Mind you, most folk were doing around 80mph (single carriageway, 65mph limit) so the few bimblers were just about the only ones I did pass!

[anonymous-user]

IROC-Z said:

Passing lanes in the UK and in Europe are as you describe, i.e. faster traffic has to merge back once the passing lane ends whereas in NZ the opposite is true.

There are exceptions though, I can think of a few on the A470 that are the "Wrong" way.

[yellowyellow]

The M25 between Denham and Watford has this and I too have always thought it silly. A truck that has lumbered up the hill and lost a chunk of speed now has to find a slot, on a very busy stretch of road, to merge back in to the flow, which of course now means all the MLMs have to wake up and brake or swerve into the 'new' middle lane and then you get panic braking in the remaining 2 lanes which eventually ripples back in to a jam at some point. With my tin foil hat on I would say this is the reason it was designed as such.