Zipper-merge trial held without hitch

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This article was published 11/06/2015 (3771 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

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They’re zipping and merging, and traffic is moving — and Matt Allard is a happy man.

“Things seem to be working well — Winnipeggers are getting it,” Allard, the city councillor for St. Boniface, said after watching Winnipeg drivers get their first taste of the zipper-merge strategy for moving vehicles through the loss of lanes under construction.

“I was there for about half an hour — I only saw one situation where cars weren’t letting other cars in,” Allard said.

On Wednesday, the city introduced the system in the northbound lanes of Lagimodiere Boulevard, where there’s a construction project between Fermor Avenue and Dugald Road.

The idea is when a lane disappears, the zipper merge uses all the available space to keep things moving as opposed to all traffic being forced to merge into only one open lane.

The city has posted a series of signs, Allard explained, alerting drivers to use both lanes equally until they reach a certain point just ahead of the construction, at which everybody shares the remaining lane, taking turns to move into one lane.

“People were getting it, because the signage was there. The culture might just change,” Allard said.

The public works department will report to city council on how the Lagimodiere project goes, and it could lead to zipper merges becoming the standard on major roadways losing lanes to construction.

“My hope would be, if the report is positive and the public response is positive, we could endorse this for construction sites across the city,” Allard said.

The Canadian Automobile Association’s Manitoba branch is in favour of the zipper merge, said communications director Liz Kulyk.

“We definitely think there’s some potential in Winnipeg — we’re in support of the experiment,” Kulyk said.

Kulyk said when Winnipeg introduced traffic circles, there wasn’t enough education for drivers uncertain what to do; CAA is urging the city to educate drivers this time around, she said.

nick.martin@freepress.mb.ca