Driver misses right turn on red
A colleague who works nights encountered a change in her commute home and wondered what brought it about:
At one time you could turn right on red onto northbound Charles from westbound Mount Royal. Now you cannot do that. The two right lanes or so of Charles north of Mount Royal are torn up now with roadwork. But before that happened, the light was changed so that the two lanes of Mount Royal continuing west across Charles get a green light, while the two right-turning lanes still have a red light.
Is it this way because of the construction? Could (it be OK) to turn right on red after a certain time (7 p.m. seems most common)? Could the light be programmed to allow all the traffic to move thru the intersection at some time if it’s not safe to do so earlier in the day? Thanks. Any light you can shed on this will be appreciated.
Those questions were posed to Kathy Chopper, spokeswoman for the city Department of Transportation, who had this explanation:
At one time, motorists were able to make right turns onto Charles from westbound Mount Royal, but that traffic pattern was recently changed. The City of Baltimore worked with the University to adjust signal timing and eliminate right turns on red at that intersection due to the heavy amount of pedestrian traffic.
The right turns on red were eliminated to provide enough time for pedestrians to cross in a safe manner. These changes were not related to the construction that is taking place in the area.
My question would be how many pedestrians there are to protect around midnight, when my colleage passes through the intersection.
Comments
The root of the problem seems to be that the lights are not on any sort of sensor. This is a major problem in suburban areas after "nightfall" (say.... 10:00 pm). Lights are on normal schedules, cars must stop, no one goes through the light for 40 seconds and then the light changes. Many, many suburban (and probably urban) lights could be changed to 4-way flashing reds during off-peak hours with absolutely no change in safety but a big increase in efficiency.
Posted by: Mitch | November 13, 2009 8:49 AM
Michael,
Whatever happened to the much vaunted and expensive traffic light computer control system. I remember hearing about it regularly during the time when O'Malley was still mayor. I never heard if it was actually implemented. Can you please shed some light.
Posted by: Joe C. | November 13, 2009 12:14 PM
As a kid I remember driving downtown with Dad at a comfortable **pace** that allowed us to consistently cross through nearly every intersection. He described how it was before Mr Barnes was allowed to implement his controls.
Why must we continue to reinvent the wheel and worse to let that be called progress?
A quick google:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_Barnes_%28traffic_engineer%29#Baltimore
Posted by: MrRational | November 15, 2009 1:35 PM
Isn't the issue more the double turn lane? You do have pedestrians there even late at night, granted not too many, but the problem is allowing right on red there is problematic with two turn lanes because it makes it more difficult to judge oncoming traffic, the car in the turn lane next to you _and_ pedestrians. To me it seems less about volume of pedestrians (which will be much higher most places in DC where right on red is allowed) and more about having two right turn lanes.
Posted by: Fritz | November 23, 2009 10:19 AM