(The Bay Area contingent of HN can answer that!) Traffic lights (typically red/green only) at the bottom of on-ramps that rate-limit ("meter") traffic onto the freeway, typically during rush hour. You drive up to a red, stop, it turns green and you go. (Sometimes a sign indicates that 2 cars get to go per green given.) There are usually sensors embedded in the rightmost lane of the freeway shortly before the merge point, and on a good day, it feels like it gives you a green timed with a gap. (Although I think it also sometimes just times out and lets you go, in which case, no gap.)
The ones here have an HOV lane and a non-HOV lane, usually; typically they just force the HOV lane to come to a near stop before turning green; I think that's more to slow the HOV traffic down to avoid collisions with the adjoining non-HOV lane should their light also turn green, but it feels like a weird formality when driving it. Some days the cops sit on the ramp pulling people cheating in the HOV lane.
It is one of the two things I warn family visiting that have never visited before. (In the majority of the US, you just get on the highway, there isn't a traffic light at the bottom of a ramp, that'd be absurd, since you're wanting to accelerate to ~70mph.) (The other is lane splitting: motorcycles will (ab)use the dividing line, particularly between lanes 1 & 2, to pass.)
> Did you know that the long pointy triangle thing is called a “gore”?
> Well, you might survive, because there is a thing there that is designed to crush when you hit it. It might be a QuadGuard Elite Crash Cushion System
Or it might be the traditional solution, which is a bunch of rubbermaid garbage pails filled with water.
(Not that long ago, I was trying to let someone merge in front of me, but they couldn't make up their minds and ended up slamming their brakes into the gore. I bet they had fun getting out of there.)
I skimmed the comments here before reading the article and was curious what a "gore" looked like. After a seconds pause, I decided I should get on with reading the article instead of searching for "highway gore" :)
Some customers have indicated that common deicing
and dust control chemicals that are used on the
highway make excellent choices for antifreeze
agents. These include:
In the NYC area, we also have some on-ramps with red/green traffic lights. However, these are only active during peak traffic times, and are otherwise turned off.
They are similarly active only during peak hours in CA.
Usually, at the entrance to the ramp from whatever road feeds it, there's also a sign that lights up flashing to tell you the metering is on, so you know you can expect to stop ahead.
(The Bay Area contingent of HN can answer that!) Traffic lights (typically red/green only) at the bottom of on-ramps that rate-limit ("meter") traffic onto the freeway, typically during rush hour. You drive up to a red, stop, it turns green and you go. (Sometimes a sign indicates that 2 cars get to go per green given.) There are usually sensors embedded in the rightmost lane of the freeway shortly before the merge point, and on a good day, it feels like it gives you a green timed with a gap. (Although I think it also sometimes just times out and lets you go, in which case, no gap.)
The ones here have an HOV lane and a non-HOV lane, usually; typically they just force the HOV lane to come to a near stop before turning green; I think that's more to slow the HOV traffic down to avoid collisions with the adjoining non-HOV lane should their light also turn green, but it feels like a weird formality when driving it. Some days the cops sit on the ramp pulling people cheating in the HOV lane.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ramp_meter
It is one of the two things I warn family visiting that have never visited before. (In the majority of the US, you just get on the highway, there isn't a traffic light at the bottom of a ramp, that'd be absurd, since you're wanting to accelerate to ~70mph.) (The other is lane splitting: motorcycles will (ab)use the dividing line, particularly between lanes 1 & 2, to pass.)