At present, here are the main references to jughandles. There is just a brief mention the NJ wiki, but a lot of the champs have weighed in on a few different forum topics.
Wiki: New Jersey - under “Ramps” - “For this reason, at-grade jug handle ramps on the state’s major highways that have exit-style signage should also be ramps. Other at-grade connectors that do not have exit style signage should follow the general rules for at-grade connectors.”
Forum: Standards for the Naming of Routes in NJ - especially PhantomSoul’s final comments
Forum: Jughandles - probably the most valuable discussion
Forum: Ramps - When are they not a ramp? - this later merged with the Jughandles thread
There seems to be a lot of consensus for using ramps for jughandles at at-grade connections. The NJ wiki reference to “exit style signage” would not be appropriate for most Michigan Lefts though. In practice, however, it looks like they are fairly loose with that standard.
To look at a few ML signage examples, I would hardly consider these “exit style”, but at least they’re green signs, and they exemplify what you would get at major cross streets. Sketch has a lot of really good ones in the first post on this topic, and some appear in other replies as well. If you’re really lucky, you get something like this:
When a road is maintained locally instead of by MDOT though, you may get this at best:
This has been mentioned elsewhere, but just to mention it again, a ML is distinct from a simple turnaround or u-turn in that it occurs at a junction with a cross street that would be classified as primary or higher and typically has some form of signage for the other street. The turnarounds, however, usually have a similar dedicated left turn lane but may or may not have simple signs such as “left lane must turn left”–even when there is an option to continue straight onto another street as well as turn left. We would treat these as standard at-grade connectors and not use ramps, typically have no street name, and maintain both angles >45º to get the double “turn left” instruction rather than “keep left”. From an editing standpoint, they would pretty much be the same thing as a ML except for the road type and naming convention.
It’s not a “big green sign” but it is a sign. Freeway entrance ramps throughout the country often don’t have big green signs or even green signs at all—just a little shield and a little arrow. Still, we name them for the sake of consistency.
So whereas some Michigan left setups don’t have green signs, many of them do. For the sake of consistency through the metro area (and… the state???), we name them all.
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In the New Orleans area for the non-Michigan-left type turnarounds, we use the street type and “U turn” for these. However, many of ours have signs that say “U TURN”—almost all of them in the suburbs. Although the U turns in the city are typically not signed, we name them too, for the purpose of consistency within the metro area.
In Michigan, however, I’ve never seen one of these signed as “U TURN” or anything like it, so I suppose I’d continue to leave them unnamed. I don’t really know what you guys would call them up there, although I’ve seen a few around named “Turn Around”.
I agree that with double segments, sharing the origin would be ideal. It more accurately reflects the logical aspects of the road in that whether you end up with the u-turn or going straight onto a different road, your route shares the same departure point. In order to test this out in practice, I updated one turn near Jackson and Wagner to the single origin/separate end node suggestion. The existing Michigan Left ramp segment no longer ends at the node shared by Jackson Plz, which is now served by a new continuation segment matching the road type of Jackson Plz (I’m curious to see if TTS gets plaza right too…). The new segment only allows the continuation and has the left turn disabled since that function is served by the separate Michigan Left. I’ll try to field test it on Monday to see how it works out.
Just out of curiosity, what are the documented problems with two segments sharing nodes? I can imagine routing problems where the one with faster average speed or shorter distance may be preferred, which could particularly mess with drivers if both have separate street names, etc. I haven’t seen this anywhere on the map yet where it was intentional. Any other issues?
Agreed. I would leave them unnamed as we don’t really call them anything. Even “turn around” is a colloquial rather than official use that may vary depending on where in the state you were raised. Directions might sound like “Pull out onto Jackson and turn around to go the other way on Jackson and head straight into downtown”.
EDIT: According to MDOT, it would be a “U-turn at median crossover”. It is never signed as such.
Yeah, there’s some kind of bug with the routing server that has trouble differentiating between the two.
I don’t have time to track down any of the relevant threads, but essentially, imagine two segments that start at the same node; one goes to the left, one goes to the right, and both turn back inward and meet at the same end node.
I’ve seen URs where the purple route line will show that Waze gave the route on the left segment, but the black box shows a “keep right” instruction. Also, Waze seems to have some confusion picking the actual better of the two segments. Two particularly egregious examples: a truck weigh station drawn as a single parking lot road segment off a freeway; a drive-thru drawn as a single parking lot road segment off a minor highway. In the latter example, if I recall correctly, Waze gave the route line through the drive-thru but gave no turn instruction. It’s just real weird stuff.
I’m glad that you are discussing about this M. Turns that’s very similar to our U-Turns here in NJ. I do think that there has to be an exception using ramps at grade when it comes to M.Turns and NJ U-Turns. We didn’t put that under the “ramp” section on purpose. We didn’t want to confuse new editors. I’m planning on updating our NJ wiki and put U-Turns as a separate section with images and detail explanations in lights of this discussion. I will certainly give my 2c and let you chime in on my draft before I update the wiki.
Oh by the way, I believe signs are different color in Massachusetts or in Connecticut. So, its wise to use sings instead of big Green sign.
A user needing to turn around will be told first “Turn left, at Jackson Rd E, to Wagner Rd S.”, and then “Turn left, at Jackson Rd.” A user needing to turn left onto Jackson Plz, on the other hand, will be told “Turn left, at Jackson Plz.”
If we combine the segments, we need a compromise. If we name them according to the Michigan left rules, a user will be told “turn left, at Jackson Rd E, to Wagner Rd S” even if he’s just turning onto Jackson Plz. It’s confusing and leads to an expectation that they’ll be turning right. On the other hand, if we don’t name them, we get behavior inconsistent with all other Michigan lefts, and we lose all the benefits of having a named Michigan left.
Thanks for the summary - I see where you’re coming from and I’m warming to the approach. Two additional thoughts.
Since the segment for turning onto Jackson Plz is not named, would it still give this instruction, or would is say “Turn left, at No Street”? I’ve seen this happen before.
Well, they are turning left at a sign that matches what they’ve heard from the TTS. Then they are continuing forward. It seems to me that would be self evident that you’re going straight, but then i haven’t tried it out yet either. Part of this is growing up in Michigan, you learn what to expect from a Michigan Left. Hard to say what someone who wasn’t familiar with them would say.
Nah, turns onto no-name segments take the name of the next named segment, as long as there is another next named segment. If the turn were onto a no-named segment then into a no-named parking lot, it would just say “Turn left.”
The problem isn’t necessarily that the one “turn left” instruction would be confusing, but the fact that the instruction would start with “Jackson Rd E” would be confusing. Maybe it isn’t that confusing, but it would also make it difficult to know which lane of the Michigan left to be in, in situations where, say, the left lane is left-turn-only and the right lane is left-turn-or-go-straight.
After driving these segments, once for the Michigan left, and the other for the continuation onto Jackson Plaza, those are the exact audio prompts for that setup.
Do you happen to have an Android device? If so the audio files can be extracted to be shared. I have info about how i have done it somewhere here in one of the TTS threads. If you care to try it, I’ll find the post.
Just wanted to bump this discussion back to the top of everyone’s minds. I support the concept, but would love to have a draft write-up in the Wiki to reference while editing. It can get tedious to scroll through the forum thread to make sure I’ve got it right.
If no one has any objections, I can work on a write-up and link to it on the Michigan Mapping Resources wiki page. I will clearly label it as a draft until we reach a clearer consensus on the usage with more of the active editors statewide.
