Things like this genuinely tick me off. Near my house there is an intersection - routes 113 and 30, if you know it - that has been the way it has for years. It's been that way as long as I remember, anyway, and probably longer than that.
Now I'll admit to you that the intersection is strangely organized. Whenver we give directions to people coming to visit from out of town, we have to carefully describe how to go through this intersection. It is a little confusing, but only really for people who are both unfamiliar with the layout of the intersection and needing to enter the few blocks of housing back where I live. Most of the traffic coming from that direction (from 113) is going to turn left or right onto 30, making the decision of how to navigate the intersection quite trivial.
Well it seems that in their quest to screw up all the roads in Downingtown, they've decided to reconstruct that intersection. Construction began this morning, and as I drove through it, I was left with the impression that traffic designers haven't the slightest care for efficiency.
They had strung the new lights a week or two ago, and I was curious how they were going to orient drivers to face the lights, which were incorrectly aligned to the direction of traffic coming from Whiteland Ave. As it turns out, they're ripping up the whole road and forcing cars to aim toward the lights. That's not so bad, really, except they have now removed the right-turn lane.
It's obvious that this wasn't an oversight on the part of the designer because they clearly re-lined the road already to indicate that the single lane that will now be available is for turning any direction. There is a big white three-way arrow on the gorund there now.
I wonder if anyone bothered to ask the question, "Do you people who will be affected by this change actually want this?" It seems to me like someone was thinking to fix a problem that does not exist. The main problem with that intersection is not the aiming of Whiteland Ave. northward, but how traffic coming from the south or east must yield to northbound traffic coming from the west. If it is their intent to fix this problem, then I'm glad, but I don't see why Whiteland Ave. had to be forced into one lane to accomplish this goal.
Moreover, since I'm known to see conspiracies everywhere, why do I not know about these changes? I mean, I live there, and only found out about it when they started painting new lines in the road. There has got to be a better way to obtain information about how my local government is screwing me.
And while I'm on the topic of things that irritated me while driving today, I want to repeat that area bicyclists are stupid. I passed two bikers on the street today. This is not a big deal. But no more than 20 feet to the left of the road, there is a bike trail, made specifically for bikes.Â
Now just to elminate any possibility of excuse for them, the bike trail crosses this road in two places. I passed the bikers between these two crossing points. In the stretch of road between these two crossing points there is nothing. There is no house, no road, no path. Nothing.
I realize that bicyclists have every right to be on the road if they want to, but come on! There is a freakin' path designed for your travel, away from the dangers of me running you down for your stupidity. The path even connects to the larger path in town, and that path probably goes everywhere you might need to go.
It was pretty clear from their appearance that they weren't "professional" riders. These two were just out for a ride. Don't get me wrong, the "professional" riders are much worse, insisting on biking on the windingest 1.5-lane blind-turn high-traffic roads. There should be bicycle police, and they should have guns, and just shoot these examples of evolution at work.
You're starting to sound like Pat Robertson, advocating shooting people who annoy you! ;)
Indeed, I'm hiring my own squad of elite wetwork operatives to patrol the bike trails of Downingtown and put an end to this dreadful annoyance...
Regarding the traffic, there may be a simpler explanation for what you are seeing. Here in Ottawa we had this bridge, at the top of which was a shopping center and the main defence centre offices. This bridge was six lanes wide -- two each way for cars, one each way for busses. The lanes were criminally narrow, and the traffic incredibly heavy, so road work was warrented. After three years of rehabilitating the bridge -- as in, squeezing four lanes into two, plus bus traffic, and ripping up the other side of the bridge -- we ended up with a bright, spacious, modern bridge -- for two lanes of traffic (one each way) plus two bus lanes (one each way). This of course only worked because for three years commuters had to get used to not being able to use the bridge, and so everyone ended up using alternate routes.
I would wonder if the intersection is being made deliberately unfriendly in order to encourage traffice to go elsewhere permanently.
It's a good hypothesis - one that I've thought of. But there are two reasons that I don't think this is it.
First, the only alternate routes are routes through residential neighborhoods that usually have worse opportunities for outlet onto the highway than the minimal 20-seconds this traffic light provides.
Second, that's a whole lot of expense to simply re-route traffic.
If the lack of a right-turn lane does cause a problem, there is a very nearby side road with a stop sign, but it would be a gamble - If you can't turn at the stop sign because of heavy traffic coming from the intersection with the light, you will never be afforded the opportunity to turn on a green light.
Oh, well.