I've read descriptions of how they work numerous times and cannot wrap my head around how having traffic going opposite directions cross paths does anything helpful.

Great, you're now on the appropriate side to make the turn at the far side of the interchange, so the people making the turn don't have to cross traffic to do so, at the cost of every car that crosses the interchange now having to cross traffic twice.

What?

[–] grue@lemmy.world 6 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

More people are turning than crossing.

[–] vithigar@lemmy.ca 3 points 3 weeks ago

Oh. I think I get it. You put the diverging diamond on the route with less traffic where most is expected to be exiting onto the main highway or whatever. You wouldn't put one at a place where two equally busy highways intersected.

That makes more sense.

[–] Excrubulent@slrpnk.net 2 points 3 weeks ago

The Well There's Your Problem podcast has an excellent episode about traffic engineering where they go into diverging diamonds a bit.

I think this is also the episode where they lay out essentially the mission statement of the show, that engineering decisions reflect the politics of those who mandate them, and how the hard sciencey disciplines we think of as "objective" are anything but.

It's a shame they haven't put it on their main channel, which is here: https://youtube.com/@welltheresyourproblempodca1465