We've grown accustomed to the turn, like breathing out and breathing in.
And yet, drivers elsewhere haven't. Surely they should drive our way, Joesph Hummer thinks.
He's a WSU engineer pushing to export "the Michigan left" -- that brief detour to a median turnaround lane.
Traffic wonk Joseph Hummer is chair of civil and environmental engineering at WSU.
The professor got a consulting firm's grant to help traffic planners elsewhere reduce intersection crashes, as Matt Roush explains in a WWJ newsletter, the Great Lakes Innovation and Technology Report.
The median U-turn, which most drivers around here call the Michigan left, has been a great asset in moving traffic safely and efficiently here for more than 50 years. While widely used in Michigan, other states and countries have not adopted it. Wayne State officials say that’s because the design is not included in standard manuals and software that highway designers use.
With the help of a $78,000 grant from Science Applications International Corp., a team led by Wayne State’s Joseph Hummer, professor and chair of the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, aims to change that. They plan to develop equations, text and software so that the Michigan left turn and three other alternative designs can be included in the next edition of the Highway Capacity Manual used by highway designers.
Hummer slings phrases such as "microscopic simulations" and "deterministic statistical equation-based analysis tool," but this tech-head also can dish up a pithy quote:
“We hope that in the future when people think of products from Michigan, they think of autos, cherries and Michigan left turns.”
Well-played, professor.
