Category Archives: Economics

Merging Lanes

You’re probably shifting out of your lane too soon.

Driving back from Yosemite on Thursday, Caltrans had shut down the right three (out of four) lanes on I-5 in Castaic. We lost one lane at a time, and the first merge was the slowest. Each next one sped things up, until we were all in a single lane, and moving at a reasonable speed. Part of the problem was that much of the traffic in the right lane was trucks (we were already in the left lane when the backup started). It added about twenty minutes to the trip time.