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Remove left turns for less dangerous city traffic

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Re: Remove left turns for less dangerous city traffic

#121

Post by ryukafalz »

IgorPartola wrote: post #76

I used to live near Boston and work in Boston. Traffic patterns there defy all logic until you think about the fact that the city was laid out before cars and so it’s not sized for cars, and definitely not delivery trucks. My suggestion is to remove cars altogether from that city. Like you aren’t allowed to drive a car into the city limits and delivery trucks are only allowed on certain days or hours (mail being trea…

> Would the city economy suffer? Maybe. Would it be a more pleasant place to live and work? I think so.

The results of some European cities doing basically this suggest that the city economy likely wouldn't really suffer (and in fact could improve in many cases).

That said you don't need to completely eliminate cars; blocking through traffic and severely restricting car parking can have much the same effect. If you can take a direct route on foot/by bike but have to take a more circuitous route by car, more people will do the former.

Re: Remove left turns for less dangerous city traffic

#122

Post by Stevvo »

toast0 wrote: post #80
burlesona wrote: post #51

One of the best ways to eliminate left turns is to replace four way intersections with roundabouts. This has the advantage of working even where there isn’t a grid to facilitate the “3 right turns” strategy. For a great description of why this is so effective, see the recent freakonomics podcast: https://freakonomics.com/podcast/roundabouts/

Roundabouts in the busy city center would be terrible. Where roundabouts fit best is in intersections with low demand, because they have low capacity, and there's no reasonable way to increase capacity. If it's the urban core busy city center where there are skyscrapers right up to the lot line, there's no room for a roundabout unless you're willing to make 'round a bumps' or carve some footprint out of the buildings…

Cities in Europe are full of roundabouts in the busy city center, we don't have four way intersections. It's not terrible; it's safer. They handle the throughput better than intersections, because the flow is usually uninterrupted.

Re: Remove left turns for less dangerous city traffic

#123

Post by MarcScott »

toast0 wrote: post #80
burlesona wrote: post #51

One of the best ways to eliminate left turns is to replace four way intersections with roundabouts. This has the advantage of working even where there isn’t a grid to facilitate the “3 right turns” strategy. For a great description of why this is so effective, see the recent freakonomics podcast: https://freakonomics.com/podcast/roundabouts/

Roundabouts in the busy city center would be terrible. Where roundabouts fit best is in intersections with low demand, because they have low capacity, and there's no reasonable way to increase capacity. If it's the urban core busy city center where there are skyscrapers right up to the lot line, there's no room for a roundabout unless you're willing to make 'round a bumps' or carve some footprint out of the buildings…

You should visit the UK and get a native to drive you around some city centres. We have the full range of roundabouts from massive, traffic light controlled, multi-lain and chain-linked junctions, down to tiny roundabouts that are little more than a circular bump in the road.

It's rare that I stop at a junction that requires me to cross a traffic flow, lights or no lights, that I don't wish that a roundabout had been put there instead.

Collisions can at times bring a roundabout to a halt, but more often than not, people just use common sense and move around any obstacle, while maintaining as much lain discipline as they can.

Cyclists, so long as they behave as if they are cars, also rarely have issues at roundabouts. I'm quite accustomed, in my area, to following a cyclist around a roundabout, paying attention to their hand signals, and giving them plenty of space.

Basically, it comes down to training and practice. In the UK, if you can't handle a variety of roundabouts, you'll fail your driving test.

Re: Remove left turns for less dangerous city traffic

#124

Post by deathanatos »

andi999 wrote: post #45

Are there any stats that left turns are/how dangerous? Here most (at least the majority of media reports is about) cyclist die when a truck turns right.

Those are almost certainly people making what I call "right hand turns from not the rightmost lanes", which is, IMO, the single most dangerous traffic violation a biker can encounter. It happens often, it's hard to avoid, and the consequences are bad¹.

My jurisdiction (and most I have encountered) require a right-turning vehicle to merge first into the bike lane, if there is a bike lane to the right. (And no further car lanes. Some intersections will shunt right turning vehicles across the bike lane, first, into a turning lane, and then turn at the intersection.)

My "closest call" was here: [1] I was going southbound through that intersection on a fresh green when a vehicle right turned from the left turning lane (i.e. he was also initially headed south bound). Absolutely crazy maneuver. I was forced into the right there (because otherwise, we were going to collide) and was just barely able to make it — I could feel the traction in my back tire was just barely holding onto the road the whole way through, since I was also braking like hell. Driver was just like "uh, oops?"

I'll usually watch the lane just left to me for drivers whose movement indicates some inclination of thinking about right turning (again, from the wrong lane). I don't know if people worry about blocking bikers or what. Like, if you're in my lane to make a right, and you're signalling that, I prefer that, because you're not going to pop into my lane & try to kill me. I'll wait behind you while you make the right. (Or merge around you on the left, if I can safely do so.) Or at the very least… if you're going to make an illegal right, please, signal.

[1]: https://goo.gl/maps/U2smgkRmagmcwsBAA

¹way worse than things that sound worse: car driving the wrong way — which itself happens way more often than it really should — it's much "better": I can see it coming. Honestly, as a cyclist I feel like I'm the only person out there who took a course on how to drive a car.

Re: Remove left turns for less dangerous city traffic

#125

Post by [deleted] »

toast0 wrote: post #80
burlesona wrote: post #51

One of the best ways to eliminate left turns is to replace four way intersections with roundabouts. This has the advantage of working even where there isn’t a grid to facilitate the “3 right turns” strategy. For a great description of why this is so effective, see the recent freakonomics podcast: https://freakonomics.com/podcast/roundabouts/

Roundabouts in the busy city center would be terrible. Where roundabouts fit best is in intersections with low demand, because they have low capacity, and there's no reasonable way to increase capacity. If it's the urban core busy city center where there are skyscrapers right up to the lot line, there's no room for a roundabout unless you're willing to make 'round a bumps' or carve some footprint out of the buildings…

[deleted]

Re: Remove left turns for less dangerous city traffic

#126

Post by giantrobot »

GhostVII wrote: post #44
wongarsu wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Biking is not that susceptible to weather imho. When it rains you can wear a rain coat and rain trousers. When it's cold you can wear any outdoor jacket (gore tex is great even if maybe not healthy). When it snows you have to work a bit harder. When there is ice you can use tires with spikes for great grip. The worst is hot weather, since you can only shed so much clothing. An ebike helps here, but that reduces the h…

Sure if you are super motivated you can bike in any weather. But for 95% of people they will only be willing to bike if it is nice out. The average person is not going to go out and buy a fat bike or spiked tires for the winter. And they probably shouldn't, biking in winter is dangerous if you don't know what you are doing. And sure I could wear a full rain suite and bike in the rain, but that is far less convenient…

Biking in the rain is such a laughable idea to me. I wear glasses, walking in the rain is a pain in the ass as I can't see shit, it would be impossible for me to ride a bike in the rain.

That's just a first order problem for me. Drainage in a lot of city roads is pretty awful so bicyclists have a pretty good chance of getting swamped at intersections or knocked over if a bus or truck sends a wall of rain water their way.

I guess if you don't need glasses and live in the suburbs biking in the rain might not be too terrible. I couldn't imagine it in the city center of any city I've ever been to though.

Re: Remove left turns for less dangerous city traffic

#127

Post by arrosenberg »

bombcar wrote: post #95
toast0 wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Roundabouts in the busy city center would be terrible. Where roundabouts fit best is in intersections with low demand, because they have low capacity, and there's no reasonable way to increase capacity. If it's the urban core busy city center where there are skyscrapers right up to the lot line, there's no room for a roundabout unless you're willing to make 'round a bumps' or carve some footprint out of the buildings…

Roundabouts can be made to handle high-traffic - supplemented by stop lights if necessary - satellite view Tijuana for some examples. The thing is until people are used to them - which can take years if not decades - they can be slower. And they can be hard to retrofit into older locations. In cities it may be better to turn streets to one way (making all turns “right turns” effectively).

CDMX as well, although some of their roundabouts move in both directions, which is both insane and appeared to be the worst of all worlds.

Re: Remove left turns for less dangerous city traffic

#128

Post by jwdunne »

MarcScott wrote: post #123
toast0 wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Roundabouts in the busy city center would be terrible. Where roundabouts fit best is in intersections with low demand, because they have low capacity, and there's no reasonable way to increase capacity. If it's the urban core busy city center where there are skyscrapers right up to the lot line, there's no room for a roundabout unless you're willing to make 'round a bumps' or carve some footprint out of the buildings…

You should visit the UK and get a native to drive you around some city centres. We have the full range of roundabouts from massive, traffic light controlled, multi-lain and chain-linked junctions, down to tiny roundabouts that are little more than a circular bump in the road. It's rare that I stop at a junction that requires me to cross a traffic flow, lights or no lights, that I don't wish that a roundabout had been…

Manchester is full of them. Majority of junctions on the M60, the motorway circling the city, have roundabouts after you come off / before you get on.

In fact, there are two roundabouts in Worsley/Walkden. Though those cause a huge amount of traffic in rush hour.

Pretty much any journey I take in the UK involves at least one and could be upwards of 10 to 20 for longer distance drives.

Re: Remove left turns for less dangerous city traffic

#129

Post by jakubp »

mschuetz wrote: post #40
tw04 wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was waiting for this response. As someone who doesn’t live in the city center, and has no easy means of mass transportation to get there, my response is: fine I just won’t go then. You lose my money. In NYC or Chicago that’s probably not a big deal. In the vast majority of the rest of the US, that’s how you kill a city center. I can tell you in my case, given the homelessness issue that’s been getting worse the las…

> As someone who doesn’t live in the city center, and has no easy means of mass transportation to get there, my response is: fine I just won’t go then. You lose my money. The bussiest city centers tend to be the least car and most pedestrian friendly ones. Park the car at the border of the center, then walk into the center.

When you say "then walk into the center", you do realize you are talking about a (edit) 20-30 minute walk one-way. A car could cut that in 2 minutes.

In my lifetime I was a driver in a city where it took exactly 5 minutes door-to-door from my home to ANY location in the city (at night). During the day it was maybe 8 minutes.

Then some years went by.

I now live in a city where at night it's 20 minutes, and during the day it's 45-60 minutes.

From 5/8 minutes to 20/45-60 minutes.

It's the same city.

Things change, I get it. It just feels like things are getting worse and worse and yeah, it elicits serious questions like "is this going to be my last car, ever?" etc. :)

Re: Remove left turns for less dangerous city traffic

#130

Post by PaulDavisThe1st »

gertlex wrote: post #58
tomhoward wrote: post #24

Here in Melbourne Australia, lots is being done to remove right turns (we drive on the left here) at the busiest intersections. Several "P turns" [1,2] have been introduced in the most congested areas, in which you need to go straight through the intersection, then wait to do a U-turn at a designated place, then turn left into the road you wanted to turn right into (or vice versa if you're coming from the other direc…

Sounds similar to a "Michigan Left"... which I've known of since I was a kid, though I haven't seen any new ones built that I know of (though, I no longer am in Michigan...) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michigan_left

Also common in several parts of NJ, notably driving up US1 between Phila and NYC.
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