the.com/cloverleaf
highway origami that lets cars cross paths without ever stopping or shaking hands
means A type of highway interchange where looping ramps let traffic from two intersecting roads merge and cross without head-on conflicts, forming a four-leafed shape when seen from above.
from A plain compound of "clover" (the meadow plant, from Old English "clāfre") and "leaf," named for the four-lobed shape of its ramps echoing the lucky four-leaf clover. The road sense is a 20th-century coinage, born with the automobile age as engineers reached for a familiar natural shape to describe their newfangled looping interchanges.
- first one
- opened in New Jersey, 1928
- shape source
- patterned after the four-leaf clover
- hidden flaw
- merging traffic weaves into a chaotic mess
- land hungry
- each loop eats acres of valuable space
- falling out
- engineers now favor diverging diamonds
interstate 95 cloverleaf — major highway interchange in new jersey where i-95 crosses route 27, iconic since 1960s
stack interchange seoul — gangnam cloverleaf in south korea where multiple expressways intersect, one of world's busiest