I’d never thought of moving the crosswalk so only right turners would be
effected.
There would still be the timing issue and a driver running the light
westerly in the far right lane blinded by a stopped vehicle in the lane next to
the center line.
This is still better than the needed engagement of a crossing pedestrian
with a left turning driver when there is not a delay for the pedestrian to be
able to cross.
From: wsmac-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:wsmac-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf ;
Of John Brooking
Sent: Monday, June 10, 2019 8:43 PM
To: wsmac@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [wsmac] More info on WCD/Hannaford intersection
This is interesting. I reached out over the weekend to a Facebook friend in
California who is a retired traffic engineer, about our intersection. He found
an older Google Street View photo from before the 2011 redesign which showed a
crosswalk with solid yellow paint in it, and two signs about watching for
pedestrians. We wondered why DOT changed that. Perhaps they thought adding the
pedestrian signal was enough?
He also said, regarding an exclusive pedestrian phase (one which stops car
traffic in all directions): "Lot of considerations go into adding an exclusive
ped phase: Spare capacity, coordination, compliance, desire lines, ped volume,
alternative configurations, etc. Most likely a traffic engineer would favor
simply moving the crosswalk to the other side of the intersection."
Eric has reached out again to the DOT to ask when we might expect their
recommendations. I let him know our next meeting is the 19th.