Traffic Stops at Park Street Bridge (with video)
Mrs. SD&R thinks I’m a little crazy because I have programmed the city’s maintenance department phone number into my cell (510-747-7900) so that I can easily call in issues that I notice while out and about. Basically, if I try and remember to call when I get home, I forget every time.
This might seem a little OCD, but I realized a while back that it’s not like the city has a band of roving maintenance people driving around looking for graffiti, holes in the sidewalk, broken pedestrian buttons. They rely heavily on the community to let them know what’s up and they are extremely responsive.
As some may be aware, there’s a group of people who meet at Peet’s on Friday mornings to ride to work in Oakland (come one come all, it’s open to anyone interested in joining us, we leave promptly at 8:00am). And so once a week, I find myself riding East on Blanding to the Park Street Bridge, waiting for the light and then crossing the estuary on the East Side of the bridge.
embedded by Embedded Video
Google Direkt
Many moons ago, I noticed that the when the stop light goes red on Park Street, there’s a looooong gap before the light goes green on Blanding (all the lights are red). A situation that leads to all the drivers sitting around looking at each other wondering what to do. (noticing these types of things is another reason Mrs. SD&R thinks I’m a little nuts).
So I called it in to the transportation division (not maintenance, I figure the engineers will want to look at it). A couple of weeks later, problem still exists, I call back.
Apparently, the engineers have added an one second all-red because of all the redlight running (as seen in the video!). I wonder how many tickets for running a red-light have been handed out in the last couple of years, because we seem to be heading towards an LA like situation, where you basically expect two cars to enter the intersection after the light goes red (ask your friends).
A long story short, after months of calls, I finally thought to bring my camera on my monrning Friday ride and I shot this exciting video (the lowercase sd&r’s tell me it is NOT the greatest movie ever) to prove that I am not insane. It turns out, the all-red holds for over seven seconds! Which sounds short, but feels like a lifetime when your sitting at the intersection.
The irony here, is that there been a long running discussion at the Transportation Commission regarding intersection Levels of Service (LOS) with city staff essentially taking the position that maintaining automobile levels of service (aka free flowing traffic) is of the highest importance, while the TC has held that using our current roadway systems efficiently should be the priority, but that doing so should not make walking and biking worse resulting in a reduction in the livability of a given neighborhood.
Update: Commenter Bob Gonsalves hits the nail on the head. The nursing home has a drive way with a protect phase (though it’s not triggered, it’s automatic every cycle), if I had a prize to award, he’d get it. PW is looking at reducing the green light for that phase, since it is rarely used thus increasing the green time for drivers on Park and Blanding. Who knows, it may help with the congestion at the bridge in the A.M.!
Popularity: 14% [?]
Lauren Do
November 17th, 2008 at 10:34 am
I enjoyed the background music
Bob Gonsalves
November 17th, 2008 at 2:59 pm
I actually have never noticed that occurring, maybe because I always approach Park St. from the the other side. But, see that nursing home that you pan to, with the blue toof . It has its own light, that can go green between the Park St. light going red and the Blanding light going green. I don’t know if it’s activated by an induction loop.
Jill
November 20th, 2008 at 7:42 pm
So THAT’s why it always takes at least two (sometimes three) light cycles before I can make my right turn from Blanding onto Park toward the bridge. The “no turn on red” rule at this intersection contributes to that problem as well.
I find that any time a light cycle is so short that people have to wait for more than one cycle to make it through, the incidents of red light running increase. (This is also true eastbound on Central at Park and Santa Clara and Park, although the problem there is the lack of a separate left-turn lane.)