this post was submitted on 04 Nov 2023
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[–] [email protected] 15 points 1 year ago (17 children)

Right on red also causes terrible traffic problems at busy intersections as people who don't have the right of way turn right while people who do have right of way get stuck waiting to turn left or are forced to block the intersection.

I wish my city would get rid of it, at least in downtown areas where traffic is a problem and a lot of pedestrians are walking around.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (8 children)

In general, urban signal-controlled intersections are just the traffic engineers screaming "I've tried nothing and am all out of ideas."

We use them pretty much by default in the US, but most urban areas should be vastly cutting back on them. All-way stops and, of course, roundabouts are both provably FAR safer often with no impact or a positive impact to overall congestion. Plus, pretty universally much cheaper to build and maintain.

Signal-controlled designs should be reserved for intersections where it is literally not possible to fit a more passive design while maintaining sight distances or for places where truly huge traffic volumes are involved (a significant interchange) where no other traffic flow redesign is possible.

Using traffic lights is ALL about increasing level of service. Which is just code for "The city values keeping more cars moving faster over both safety and financial responsibility."

All that to say, I bet a lot of the intersections that would be most annoying without right on red... don't really need to have lights controlling traffic flow in them at all.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Aren’t roundabouts typically significantly larger than an equivalent intersection with traffic lights? If so I’m not sure that’s what we need in urban areas. We already give up so much public space to automobiles. There’s also the question of where does that additional space even come from? Do we bulldoze more homes? To me it seems real solution is to move away from personal vehicles in urban areas. Anything else is just trying to justify an inefficient and unsustainable lifestyle.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago

They tend to be significantly larger in new construction because small ones don't really cost a lot less than big ones and most designs prefer to do something nice with the landscaping. Plus, bigger ones flow better. But you can retrofit ones that aren't vastly larger in size.

All of this is equally true of a road with bike lanes vs one without them... yet cities always seem to be able to find the space, typically by dieting the road a bit. There's typically lots of options. Narrow lanes, reduce lanes, eliminate some/all on-street parking, cannibalize the median, etc..

Neighborhood traffic circles are a pretty easy drop-in replacement for most of the worst-offender small intersections, too, and they can be achieved with as little as painted lines.

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