Speaking of Road Issues

[duffless2323.livejournal.com]

This reminds me of a question I've been meaning to ask. Who do you talk to if you feel an intersection needs a light or sign change?  Is it the city, or the alderman, do I just call 311?  Anyone have experience with this?

The intersection in question might technically be Arlington - - has anyone else noticed an issue at that 4 way intersection between Broadway and Rt 16/Alewife Brook Parkway?

If you are going down Broadway from Somerville going towards Arlington and need to make a left onto 16 you get a green light and the traffic coming the opposite direction is stopped. 

However, since you have a green light if you haven't driven through there a bunch of times you don't know they are stopped on the other side until you wait a bit and they don't go.  I have seen people needing to go left stop at this green light expecting traffic from the opposite direction to go and this seems dangerous.  I feel like if the traffic coming from Somerville has the right of way there they should have a green arrow not a green light.

Thoughts?

Comments

[zmgmeister.livejournal.com]

Well, that's a separate issue. Its too bad there's not a dedicated left-turn lane for people going west into Arlington, or if they just nixed that left altogether. But because of the maybe 5% of people who go left there, everybody else has to sandwich into the right lane.

I'm a native, but I see an unusual level of stupidity on the drive from Alewife to Broadway every evening. It starts out with the folks on Rt. 2 who refuse to make two separate lanes at the light to go left. Especially the ones who sit in the left "lane" but take the first right turn into Cambridge that's ten feet past the intersection.

Then we have the folks who sit there for ten seconds after the light turns green, so only five pairs of cars can make it through. Not to mention the traffic merging from the parkway and the little side road which never stops, not even on that tiny part of the cycle when you can actually go left from 2 onto 16.

Next we have the folks who drive slow in the left lane on Alewife so nobody can maneuver, the folks who turn left at Mass ave but refuse to use the cobblestones when the left-turn lane fills up, and so on...