Hey there #RoadSafety & #TrafficSignals brain trust:
The NE leg of this intersection has a signalized #crosswalk w/ beg button. Town staff just converted it to rest-in-walk, which is lovely. But there's a permissive yellow that allows drivers from the arterial to turn left while the #walk sign is active.
We may have the option to* either*:
* keep the rest-in-walk
or
* eliminate the permissive yellow but lose the rest-in-walk
WWYD?
https://www.google.com/maps/@35.906464,-79.0188263,77m/data=!3m1!1e3?entry=ttu
@DrTCombs So much ugh, which i dont' think i need to point out.
Everything left in its current ugh state, i vote keep rest-in-walk. crosswalk users already have to navigate to that misplaced ramp, and have good opportunity to see permissive turning drivers. And if the ramps are that bad, i assume buttons are also awkward.
@bikepedantic the buttons are ridonkulously awkward, so I'm really enjoying the new rest-in-walk. But yeah, the physical layout is truly awful. Our only hope for improvements is through signal timing.
@DrTCombs @bikepedantic hello, dummy here who purports to have experience as a transportation planner and so is embarrassed not to know this. What does “rest-in-walk” mean?
@geoff_green aka pedestrian recall, or 'automatic ped green when the parallel lanes are green' @DrTCombs
@bikepedantic @DrTCombs I don’t get why they can’t just keep both, block the permissive yellow turns if the walk signal activates at the start of a cycle (when it’s left red to start), and keep the permissive yellow if the walk signal activates in the middle of the green cycle (so that you’re not having the permissive yellow unexpectedly turn red).
@geoff_green @bikepedantic take it up with seeclickfix! https://seeclickfix.com/issues/14563384#new_comment
@DrTCombs such a big span of road to allow permissive lefts
@bikepedantic yes, but this is north carolina where drivers are perfect and always check for pedestrians before driving through a crosswalk.
@DrTCombs oh, so there's a weird open-parentheses trail ramp into a median too? lots to love here.
@bikepedantic the whole thing is half-baked.
but to be fair our previous traffic engineer is now in prison, and the new guys have a lot of fixing to do.
@DrTCombs !!!!!
[so is ours. unrelated to his work though]
@bikepedantic SAME!
ponzi scheme as well?
@DrTCombs no, much more gross, pics on a laptop
@bikepedantic sorry, I should say our previous "traffic engineer"
with those quotes doing a whole lot of work
@DrTCombs @bikepedantic Oh darren, you should see a brand new, not-yet-opened intersection which our previous “traffic engineer” apparently signed off on which, believe it or not, is worse than this. Brand new! Newly constructed! And terrible.
@geoff_green was it marketed as a 'safety enhancement?' of course it was. @DrTCombs
@bikepedantic @geoff_green I have deleted so many draft responses here because of the hot water they'd land me in.
@DrTCombs @bikepedantic @geoff_green
Here's hoping jailing people who design bad intersections becomes a trend
@bikepedantic @DrTCombs if you want, DM me an email and I’ll forward my incredulous comments to town staff from last weekend, with pictures included! (They have not yet responded because I asked a lot of questions and because I helped cause other chaos in town planning last weekend.)
@geoff_green @bikepedantic "other chaos" lololololol
@DrTCombs @geoff_green "Make Other Chaos"
@DrTCombs doing both wasn't an option? The signal in the link below was always rest in walk but they recently added a protected left. They needed to buy some new signal equipment though. I would pick protected left though for your intersection though
https://maps.app.goo.gl/tCBvKr9pYYdcUkbA9
@mrpresident1776 evidently we can only get one or the other, and only if it doesn't cost anything but staff time
@DrTCombs I didn't know what "rest-in-walk" was so looked it up and found this "By using 'Rest in Walk,' the crosswalk will sit in the Walk interval until a conflicting vehicle or pedestrian places a call." But how do they "place a call"? And if they can "place a call", why would there also be a permissive yellow turning light? Here in #stjohns we don't have either of those features--car drivers just turn when they feel like it.
@yeoman My guess is cars place that call by driving over detector loops in the left turn lane, and I'm also guessing that this particular intersection has no detector loops for the left turn lane in question, and there's no $ for changing that. So it just defaults to permissive yellow instead.
I'm not happy with that answer but I think it is accurate in this case.
@DrTCombs thanks--not a good answer but sounds like the right one.
Also I have to add how astonishing it is to get to think about this. It's been a long time coming, but Chapel Hill has some excellent plangineers doing wonderful things with practically $0.