Quote:
Originally Posted by CaptainYooh
Why not the full standard cloverleaf on Macleod/Stoney, I wonder? Seems like enough room on all four corners. This is way more complicated in all regards.
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It's not a matter of room, cloverleafs suck because of weaving and nobody builds them anymore. This is much higher capacity... think about how much faster you can drive on that yellow flyover (answer 100 kph in a half decent car) vs a loop ramp. You don't even have to slow down.
If you look at the two loop ramps in the bottom half of the interchange, the extra bridge offsetting the EB-NB loop ramp means that the traffic making the movement do not conflict (weave) with traffic on the blue SB-EB ramp. This is how 2 of the loops on the Stoney/Crowchild cloverleaf are built:
Functionally it's a cloverleaf, but it removes weaving both ways on Stoney. Downside: you have to slow way down on those tight loops and they're very low capacity. Alberta has built a bunch of these hybrid interchanges on the ring road and knows they're doing at this point.