The Blog Less Traveled

I was driving to my father-in-law’s home the other day and passed by the roadway sign you see on the left. I thought nothing of it. If you’re from Michigan, this sign makes perfect sense. If you’re from any other state, you’re probably going to do a double take – What the heck was that? I thought South and North were the opposite of each other!

For the uninitiated, this sign is telling you that a “Michigan Left Turn” is coming up. At this intersection, you can’t make a normal left turn by getting in the left lane and turning left. You have to get in the right lane, turn right, move over to the far-left lane and then make a u-turn about 100-200 yards up the road. Easy, right? If you’re from Michigan, you don’t give this a second thought. It becomes part of your DNA. Not being from Michigan, this took me a little while to get used to.

The Michigan Left Turn was started in 1960 by the Michigan Department of Transportation (MDOT). The first implementation was done in the Detroit area at the intersection of Eight Mile Road and Livernois Avenue. The rationale behind it was to improve traffic flow at large intersections by eliminating left turns and the backups that can happen at busy times.

Personally, I think they’ve gone overboard on using these types of intersections. I can see their value at heavily used intersections. From both a safety and traffic flow standpoint, they make sense. However, it seems like they’re starting to use them at almost every intersection that has any kind of traffic at all. I’m no traffic engineer but I would wager that for 80% of the day, their benefit is negligible. One thing I’d like to see them do is to make the normal left turn available after the standard rush hour times. This would still give the safety and traffic flow benefit during the busy times, but speed up left turns the rest of the day. With gas prices going through the roof, this would also have the benefit of getting traffic through the intersection faster by totally eliminating the extra time and distance of the longer Michigan Left Turn.

For more history on the Michigan Left Turn, click here.

For additional informational from Wikipedia, click here.