dangerous intersection

[desiringsubject.livejournal.com]

So, there was Yet Another bad car accident on the corner of Powder House Blvd and Packard Ave yesterday. Including a baby in a carseat in the car that ended up on the lawn of 125 Powder House. This intersection, I believe, is too dangerous to have a blinky light any longer. People routinely cruise down Powder House at 45 mph or more and cannot stop for pedestrians or turning cars.

To whom does one write a letter about this? I really feel that a real, three light traffic light is finally called for there, at least so that one can push the button for a walk. Even a blinky light like they have on Rt. 16 so that you *can* push the button for a walk would be an improvement, but wouldn't solve the issue of people turning off or onto Packard, which people do pretty frequently.

Thoughts, dslj?

Comments

[ursamajor]

I live near one of those blinking lights intersections now, and even with the push button for the walk signal, I am very cautious at them - I would say at least 1/3 of the time when I need to cross, at minimum, one driver will just speed on through their red light and my walk signal, if not more.

(And it's not a blinking light intersection, but a routine safety failure: when people try to turn left onto Somerville Ave from Mossland - the cars headed southeast on Somerville Ave routinely misinterpret the two sets of lights they can see. When I have the green light coming from Mossland, the "near" light on Somerville Ave SE is red, but the "far" light at the corner of Somerville and Beacon is green. I've almost been T-boned *twice* in the last month at that intersection because Somerville Ave drivers think that far-green means they can go, and the nearby-red light must be broken. Or they didn't *see* the nearby-red light, or at the very least didn't understand that *that* was the light that applied to them.)

Um. I should probably take the advice of this post and figure out who my alderman is and get some attention directed that way, right? *grin*

[intuition-ist.livejournal.com]

that intersection (somerville ave / mossland) is terrible -- the traffic flow is always backed up and those two lights on somerville ave have the longest red cycle of any light i've ever seen in the boston area. result? frustrated drivers and higher chances of an accident.

[solarpanda.livejournal.com]

That intersection is a complete failure of traffic engineering. I've seen so many cars speed through reds just so they don't have to wait at both lights. To make matters worse, you have the weird Beacon/Oxford/Roseland intersection that already makes drivers needlessly aggressive.

I'm not really sure what can be done about that intersection, aside from a complete re-routing of the streets or turning Mossland into a permanent stop (which would back up everything all the way past the Cedar/Elm intersection). Blah.

If only the city planners had played enough Sim City to realize that two adjacent intersections makes for a lot of crappy traffic...

[ron_newman]

I think the best thing to do there is to just remove all the traffic lights. The intersections worked well before they were added with the bridge replacement. People would just pull halfway out into the intersection from Mossland or Beacon and wait to squeeze in when turning left.

[m00n.livejournal.com]

Indeed, statistics seem to show that the less controlled an intersection is, the safer it will be because people feel the need to be cautious only if they do not think they know what's going on.

I think the biggest problem here is that Powder House Boulevard AND Packard Street are just entirely too wide and un-cluttered for the amount of traffic they carry. This induces people to drive far too fast on them. Want to make people drive more slowly? Narrow the lanes, in this case I'd say by about HALF. Maybe we could use some stimulus money on it! :-)

[desiringsubject.livejournal.com]

OH!! And do so by way of painting awesomely wide bike lanes!

[solarpanda.livejournal.com]

I wonder... it seems that Mossland and Somerville Ave are always backed up to the next intersection during rush hour, but I can see that it might be a result of the traffic lights.

[kalliejenn2.livejournal.com]

people do that (drive on through) even in powderhouse circle, where the lights *aren't* blinking red -- they're solid red!

[solarpanda.livejournal.com]

That circle is plain weird, though. If I recall correctly, some of the streets have cycling lights, one or two has a blinking light, and the others have stop signs... I'm not saying it's any excuse to not pay attention, but if they were all uniform (as in all stop signs), it'd increase the likelihood that people wouldn't just zoom through.

[pekmez.livejournal.com]

All of the streets have stop signs, and in addition they all have lights - the lights are flashing red to agree with the stop sign, and turn solid red if someone presses a walk button that affects the crosswalk you'd be crossing.

If you're in the rotary, there are directions that you have a flashing yellow to exit the rotary onto a street, and directions that you don't. Again, if someone presses a walk button, these turn solid red for some appropriate set of crosswalks.

but I know that because I've lived right off it for 10+ years; I constantly watch people do stupid things in that rotary. My own personal pet peeve is that when the crosswalk lights have just changed back from solid red and I'm in the rotary, the state reverts to me having a flashing yellow and the traffic entering from the road having a flashing red/stop sign. Thus "yield to traffic in rotary" applies to them, but they never do.

[lonelyholiday.livejournal.com]

Just want to agree with this... I HATE that intersection. Drivers never seem to know what's going on, and as a pedestrian, it seems the "walk" only comes up every few cycles, even if you hit the button... So I end up either standing there waaaaay too long, watching cars (attempt to) take their turns in each direction more than once, or deciding to chance it and run through a lull in the traffic. Which is always kind of heart-stopping, since the flow of traffic is so weird there anyway, you don't really know where cars might be coming from.

Blah blah blah. Like I said, just agreeing.