What can be done about the Parkway car trap?

As many others are highlighting, it seems an awful lot of locals have no clue on how to merge – at anything above 40km/hr.
The “this is MY lane, and NO one is moving over, so I’ll extreme tail-gate” mentality is not helping.
I see it most days. Congestion ahead – Thru traffic all shifts right and speeds up! On-ramp traffic crawls along with absolutely no space between cars. Muppets jumping across multiple lanes, squeezing into non-existent gaps! Cars going from 100+ to almost stopped within a hundred meters. I’m only surprised there are not more major pile ups in that area.
If a few more people just tried to match speeds, and allowed a few car spaces between, everything would just work. But no. Me, me, me.

I used to commute on that road most days by motorcycle and usually had an interesting story involving another bad Canberra driver at the end of the trip. It is quite dated and probably carrying more traffic than it was ever designed to carry, but driven sensibly it does not present too many challenges. The trouble is many users just do not really understand the concept of driving to the conditions, and quite a number of the others respond to the adversarial behaviour on display.

The Glenloch Interchange design seems reasonable and would probably work well if people would set themselves up for the intersection early and travel in the correct lane. The absurdity of the last minute change from the right lane across the front of a vehicle going straight ahead in order to exit is what probably results in a lot of the mishaps, and I imagine a few more are caused by vehicles entering from the Arboretum direction. A lowering of the speed limit is unlikely to resolve the issues because much of the traffic will just ignore the speed limit anyway, as occurs now. A better solution may be to construct solid concrete walls to reduce the opportunity to change lanes at inappropriate points. Some of the other bad driving would benefit from some policing attention if they were interested.

I’m one of those “pesky motorists” who travel at 80km/h on the Parkway. I just feel that 80 is fast enough for me, I’m in no great hurry. If you want to travel at 100, get into the right lane and don’t bother getting behind me flashing your lights and beeping your horn.

Last summer that happened and we pulled over and the other guy got out thinking he could abuse a little old lady in a Barina. I was wearing no shirt and when he came to the window and saw me he said “Oh sorry mate”, walked back to his car and drove off.

As much as I hate lower speed limits, that is one road that should have variable limits that depend on vehicle density. For every few people driving well, there always seems to be a tailgating weaving fool on that road. It makes no sense when it is busy because as much as you weave and tailgate you don’t get any closer to your destination when there is a vehicle in front.

The short version: close off the second exit (the City exit which has no slip lane) and have all exiting traffic use the long slipway. Also put concrete dividers between lanes for the 200m before the gore to prevent drivers darting across the left lane of traffic to get to the exit.

The long version: humans are shitty drivers, and some of them do stupid stuff like speed up in the right hand lane to overtake exiting traffic (who are slowing down) and entering traffic (who are speeding up) in the left lane, then they jump on the brakes and dive left across a lane of traffic to get to the Belconnen/City exit.

The design of the Glenloch interchange is compromised by the presence of the entry ramp from Arboretum/Lady Denman Drive into the northbound lanes of the Parkway which means that entering traffic is using the same sliplane as exiting traffic.

So you have drivers speeding up to 90km/h to merge into the Parkway and drivers travelling at 90km/h or faster trying to merge into the slip lane.

So options to remedy the situation include:

1. Canberrans learn to drive and plan their exits, and pace themselves to existing traffic

2. Close the second exit lane to encourage use of the slip lane

3. Close the entry ramp from Forest Drive onto Tuggeranong Parkway northbound (route traffic left for Belconnen, southbound on Tuggeranong Parkway to use Cotter Road to turn around for Gungahlin/Civic

4. Concrete dividers between lanes from before the Forest Road exit till after the Parkes Way exit to prevent lane darters causing accidents

5. Install light rail connecting Tuggeranong, Woden, Belconnen and Civic to reduce commuter load on Tuggeranong Parkway.

The problem isn’t the road, it is the idiots driving on it.
Every day you see people trying to merge into a 90 or 100 zone doing 50, being unable to match speed with traffic and find a spot to safely merge, or worst of all stopping at on ramps or merge points because they failed at driving.

I can’t understand why so many people are so terrible at getting up to speed, picking a safe spot to merge and moving across. Will be the same people who sit in the right hand lane doing 80 in 90 and 100 zones.