It will look like that. In my opinion, this costs too much, takes too much time to build (the traffic in that part of the city is horrible when the intersection is partly closed) and too much trees needed to be cut down, including a 330 year old one that the tree huggers tried to protect, but got arrested by the police.
I don't know what to say other than that the new one looks perfectly decent. Interesting to see an overpass split like that to prevent multiple lanes from having to merge into each other, could be really effective. The reality is that any one junction (in a given space) can only handle so much traffic, no amount of creativity will get you past that point, however building an overpass or underpass to allow people to skip the junction entirely will. The efficiency and safety of turbo roundabouts is also well documented. So outside of reducing the number of cars that use the intersection (via reducing number of people who use cars or building more bypass roads) there is not really a whole lot that can be done.
I agree that the reconstruction plan looks pretty good. There's not really anything I can do to improve upon it using a single-level interchange for the reasons @aljowen said, but I can play around with it and maybe come up with something. At first glance, it seems I can cut costs, save the tree, or improve traffic flow, but not all three. Could you send me a Google Maps link so I can get a better look? Never mind, I found it.
Aside from what I already mentioned, the new design has three faults in my opinion: 1. The overpass crosses the intersection from east to west, which is the direction with lightest traffic. This means almost all drivers will still have to use the ground level intersection. 2. There are too much traffic lights. This greatly reduces the number of accidents this intersection used to be famous for, but slows down traffic, creating queues that can become jams. Drivers from at least 2 directions (besides the overpass) should be able to cross the intersection without stopping (like they used to on the old intersection). 3. The part highlighted in red shouldn't be accessible for drivers coming from west (marked green). They ought to use the overpass to get to the eastern side, but many careless drivers will still try to go through the ground level intersection, accumulating where they weren't meant to be (at the traffic lights in the red marked zone), causing nuisance for rule-abiding drivers and creating jams in the zone highlighted in red.
It looks like there may be reasons for them to use the turbo roundabout even if they are going straight. In the distance it looks like the next turn off may be blocked if you used the overpass. Hence some people may need to use that. But at the end of the day, they will have put wires across the roads to see how many vehicles use each section of road and with a little bit of estimation they will be able to see roughly where they are going based upon that data. They will have plugged those numbers into a computer simulation and tested how well the intersection functions under real life loads.
This is a really tricky spot. I've been doodling for a couple of hours and I find myself repeatedly coming back to more-or-less the same design they did. So far I've replaced the overpass with an underpass and made a different overpass going from top left to top right, as you suggested, and added a bypass lane so traffic going from top right to top left can avoid the roundabout altogether, but their design is really the best way to go when cost is taken into account. I also tried replacing the roundabout with a regular four-way intersection in addition to the over- and underpasses, but a turbo roundabout is the only intersection I can figure out without cutting down ALL of the trees and putting in two large T junctions (which is likely what civil engineers where I live would have done in the first place).
Hmm these taxes to be on Diesel car owners are getting pricey, like especially for my mum her £520/yr Ssangyong Rodius is going to get more expensive, that car is really costly to run it's mad, 25-30MPG on diesel and no DPF so the road tax is through the roof
I thought tax rates usually remained the same thought the lifespan of a vehicle in the UK? So whatever tax rates applied when it was first registered are what you still pay now?
Correct, tax rate is set at date of registration and do not change. The government's changes in tax rate even specify that existing vehicles will see no change
In which case the amount of tax you have to pay for that vehicle is actually cheaper than ever, since inflation. But, yes. If you buy a car that gets terrible fuel economy and has equally terrible emissions, its going to be expensive to run. But all of those numbers are available for anyone to look up before buying a car, so I guess your parents chose that whatever it is that car offered was worth the money.
US MPG != UK MPG (In the US you use US gallons, in the UK we use Imperial Gallons) So its actually 20-25USMPG. Plus its a diesel which makes those figures look even worse since diesel engines tend to get around 10mpg more than petrol (Gas) engine. That is for a 150-160hp engine that allows it to do 0-60 in anywhere between 13-15 seconds, presumably longer when filled with people etc. The reason its Road Tax is high is because it emits 230g/km of Carbon Dioxide, which isn't terrible, but for the amount of power it is pretty bad. For example a Range Rover sport that makes 542hp emits 298g/km of Carbon Dioxide. Then a Ford Transit with just as many seats and space gets 166g/km (170HP). Of course those carbon dioxide ratings are per the specifications, which is what Road Tax was based upon during that period, so the real readings under real world use will likely be higher for all vehicles.
Oh yeah forgot about the difference there. 20-25 still isn't terrible though, but I'm comparing to my pickup that weighs 7000 lbs and has 5.9 L of displacement.
We'd expect a vehicle like that to get at least 35mpg(UK) which most of its competitors do, with less emissions (and therefore tax) and most of them are faster too not that you're gonna be racing in a minivan. Essentially, it's a pretty crap set of stats. The one thing it has going for it is being somewhat cheap. --- Post updated --- Well no if you're going to complain about fuel economy and tax on a family car that doesn't need high performance, was getting the big engine the way forwards? It's not much faster, it's the least efficient so costs more to run and it costs more to tax it to the tune of £520 a year. The base engine only costs 200-250 a year to tax, costs slightly less to insure and hits almost 40mpg. Solving all the above complaints. And it's a ssangyong rodius, it's an ugly people carrier/minivan, not a race car. Now take the Mustang where in UK we don't get the V6 and therefore the choices are ecoboost i4 or V8, and you have an argument for the big engine. That said, most euro reviewers will tell you to dealership option the mountune package into the i4 which then leaves you on almost V8 performance figures but lower tax and fuel consumption, plus a slightly lower purchase price and superior handling on European twisty roads. The i4 massively lower weight does cause the Mustang to have significantly improved handling over the v8. But that's Europe, cruising on an American road trip I'd join you in the v8
Hybrid performance cars (not many if not any examples for the masses though) and smallish engines that produce more power than big engines from yesteryear, what a time to be a car guy.
I actually dont mind them as long as they have at least somewhat of a real sound (im looking at you i8) so id love to have a infiniti q60 as a hybrid because everyone is happy because your eco and you are happy because you have great v6 and you have to pay less tax and less fuel so its a win win situation
