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corrected for lane bryant

For people named Lane and other uses of the word, please see Lane (disambiguation).

The word lane has two meanings:

A narrow road, usually lacking a shoulder or a median. The word is typically applied to roads in the countryside, but can also be applied to urban streets like Drury Lane in London. Large cities in the U.S. states of Nevada and Texas like to apply the term to many arterial roads. Also see alley.
A portion of a paved roadway which is intended for a single line of vehicles and is marked by white or yellow lines. This is the more commonly used meaning in everyday English speech and is the one elaborated upon here.

In contrast to lane-less countries such as Egypt, most countries with a significant number of motor vehicles mark lanes on their paved roads. Drivers are usually required to stay within a lane as much as reasonably possible. In many countries, a prolonged inability to stay in one's lane is considered to be a symptom of driving under the influence and may lead to a citation, or even an arrest, for a moving violation.

1 Types of lanes
2 Lane markings
3 Medians or central reservations
4 History
5 See also

Types of lanes

A traffic lane or travel lane is a lane for the movement of vehicles traveling from one destination to another, not including shoulders and auxiliary lanes.

A through lane or thru lane is a traffic lane for through traffic. At intersections, these may be indicated by arrows on the pavement pointing straight ahead.

A carriageway is a series of lanes (or part of a road) in which vehicles travel.

A fire lane is the area next to a curb, which is reserved for firefighting equipment in the event of a fire. Parking in these areas, usually marked by red lines, often warrants a parking ticket.

A loading lane is an area next to a curb, which is reserved for loading and unloading passengers. It may be marked by a "LOADING ONLY" sign or a yellow or white curb.

A passing lane is often provided on steep mountain grades, in order to allow smaller vehicles to pass larger, slower ones. This is sometimes called a climbing lane if on the uphill side. Passing lanes may also be provided on long stretches of other roadway. On two-lane roads, passing in the lane of oncoming traffic is sometimes allowed given a long enough straightaway, if the broken line is on the normal side of travel.

A collector lane of a road is used for slower moving traffic and has more access to exits/off ramps.

An express lane of a road is used for faster moving traffic and has less access to exits/off ramps.

A transfer lane of a road is used to move from express lanes to collector lanes, or vice-versa; it is somewhat similar to an auxiliary lane.

An auxiliary lane along a highway or motorway connects slip roads, with the entrance ramp or acceleration lane from one interchange leading to the exit ramp or deceleration lane of the next.

The emergency lane of a road (also known as the breakdown lane or shoulder) is reserved for breakdowns, and for emergency vehicles. Often, especially in rural areas, these lanes deliberately have ruts cut in them, in order to warn drivers that they are leaving the roadway. This feature is especially important in the circumstance that a driver falls asleep at the wheel.

An HOV lane or carpool lane is reserved for carpooling. It may be marked with a diamond icon every few hundred feet (hence the nickname "diamond lane"), or separated from other lanes by double broken white lines, a continuous pair of double yellow lines, or just a single broken white line.

An HOT lane is reserved for drivers without passengers, who pay a toll for the privilege.

A turn lane is set aside for slowing down and making a turn, so as not to disrupt traffic. At a full intersection with a traffic light, turn lanes are used more to hold traffic until the light changes.

A bicycle lane is a portion of the roadway or shoulder for the exclusive or preferential use of bicyclists. This is indicated by special word and/or symbol markings on the pavement and "BIKE LANE" signs.

A bus lane is reserved for buses providing public transportation on a fixed route, especially if there is an overhead catenary for electric buses. In some countries, bus lanes may also be used by some other traffic, such as taxis, bicycles and motorbikes.

A reversible lane is one which uses overhead lights, signs, poles or barriers to indicate the current direction of travel it is to be used for. Typically, it is used at rush hour to accommodate extra traffic, and at other times as a center turn lane. In between, there is approximately one hour where no traffic is allowed. While the idea is very simple, the term suicide lane became a common slang description for this design, because many people ignored their driving or the lights. Because of their history of numerous accidents and collisions, reversible lanes are rarely used now. However, there are some functional examples on the river bridges just east of downtown Los Angeles which use lights only and nothing else to indicate the direction of traffic for each lane. Some places, like Hawaii, call these lanes contraflow lanes and enforce them with plastic poles which are manually rearranged by work crews before and after rush hour.

Lane markings

It has been suggested that this article or section be merged into Road marking. (Discuss) A typical rural American freeway (Interstate 5 in the Central Valley of California). Notice the yellow line on the left, the dashed white line in the middle, and the solid white line on the right. There is also a "rumble strip" on the shoulder which is not easy to see here.

In general, broken lines mean passing is allowed, single solid lines mean it is discouraged, and double solid lines mean it is prohibited, as it often is in tunnels.

In most countries, yellow is used down the center to denote oncoming traffic is across the line. On a divided road (or dual carriageway or twinned road), a median (central reservation) segregates the traffic. White is usually used to separate traffic going in the same direction. Some places have this reversed.

Some Western European countries reserve white for routine lane markings of any kind, and use yellow to indicate when lanes are being shifted temporarily to make room for construction projects. Although New Zealand follows the normal convention of a double yellow line to indicate no passing on roads with two-way traffic, it also uses a dashed white line to indicate when passing against opposing traffic is allowed on two-lane roads and to separate lanes going in the same direction, with humorous results.

In all countries, private roads and parking lots often ignore the rules altogether.

In the U.K., zig-zag lines painted on the street mark a pedestrian crossing area. In the U.S., such areas (crosswalks) are indicated at a minimum by a pair of white lines. On major boulevards, crosswalks are further highlighted by zebra stripes, which are large white rectangles in the crosswalk perpendicular to traffic.

"Neutral" areas where traffic is prohibited are often painted with stripes. These areas are often called the gore or gore point where they are formed by the merging or separation of lanes.

Lines are usually painted with highly reflective paint, often with tiny clear beads that reflect light straight back like a raindrop. Glass and now plastic reflectors are often embedded next to the lines for improved nighttime visibility. In California and Nevada, the reflectors are usually the lines, and no paint is used. Exceptions include: freeways built from white concrete where painted stripes are added to make the lanes more visible through sun glare, freeways built so wide that the risk of drifting is minimal (e.g., Interstate 5 in the Central Valley), and freeways in areas where it snows in the winter (since the snowplows would scrape off the Botts Dots).

Frequently, the "back" of the white reflectors are red, to indicate the wrong direction of travel for anyone who enters the wrong way.

A typical stretch of Valencia Boulevard in Valencia, California, where the lanes are marked only by Botts dots. The bridge in the distance carries a paseo (a type of dedicated pedestrian pathway unique to Valencia) over the roadway.

In California, the white round ceramic button reflectors used to mark lanes on most freeways are known as Botts dots, after Eugene Botts, the Caltrans engineer who invented the epoxy that keeps them glued down. A large number of California cities also use Botts dots on some (or all) major arterials. The notable exception is the City of Los Angeles, which cannot afford to maintain any raised lane markers due to its fiscal problems and uses only paint.

Medians or central reservations

Besides a painted line, lanes of traffic moving in opposing directions can also be separated by any of the following:

grass strip or ditch
a wide paved area with special paint markings indicating that it should never be crossed
metal guard rail (or guide rail) affixed to metal or wooden posts
cable barriers
concrete barriers, such as Jersey barriers

Such separations between opposing traffic are referred to as a median in American English and as a central reservation in British English.

History

For much of human history, roads generally did not have lane markings. This was probably because most of the time, pedestrians, equestrians, and horse-drawn vehicles all moved slower than 10 miles per hour most of the time, and thus everyone had adequate time to swerve around each other. Photos of the streets of any major city from the 19th century show all three types of traffic freely intermixed with each other. Another reason for not using lane markings was that they are expensive to maintain.

However, when automobiles, trucks, and buses came into widespread use during the first two decades of the 20th century, it became common for drivers to get into head-on collisions, or to literally run each other off the road.

Anyone who has ever driven a vehicle is aware that it takes long practice to develop a sense of where the edges of one's vehicle are in relation to the road's edges and to other vehicles. Without the feedback provided by lane markings, novice drivers in the early days often erred in favor of keeping closer to the middle of the road, rather than risk going off-road into ditches or trees. Unfortunately, this practice often left inadequate room for opposing traffic to go by.

The invention of lane markings is generally credited to an American physician, Dr. June McCarroll. Based in Indio, California, McCarroll started experimenting with painting lines on roads in 1917 after she was personally run off a highway by an inexperienced truck driver. In November of 1924, California officially adopted a policy of painting lines on its highways. By 1939, lane markings had become so popular that they were officially standardized throughout the United States, and were soon in use all over the world.

A portion of Interstate 10 near Indio has been named the Dr. June McCarroll Memorial Freeway in her honor.