Right turns on red lights in Powder House and similar pseudo-rotaries?

[sparr0.livejournal.com]

I've asked this of a few friends, and tweeted it to some Somerville officials, and now I'm asking you, fine folks of DSLJ. What do you think about turning right after stopping at these red lights? Why?

EDIT: There are no "No Turn on Red" signs at these intersections.

Comments

[ron_newman]

For all of them, I'd say:

- not OK if there's a No Turn on Red sign (is there?)
- OK if you come to a complete stop, and yield to cars in the rotary and pedestrians in the crosswalks

[sparr0.livejournal.com]

There are no "No Turn on Red" or similar signs at any of these turns.

[cos]

What makes those right turns "questionable"?

[sparr0.livejournal.com]

The majority of people that I have polled in person believe that they are illegal (including mutual friends of ours). The majority of people who stop at them do not proceed to turn when the intersection and crosswalks are clear.

[lightgamer.livejournal.com]

Thank you SO MUCH for posting this; I've been wondering the same thing for ages. Please post what, if anything, you hear back from official sources!

Since I live a few blocks up Warner Street, I make the right on red from Broadway onto Warner pretty regularly - it doesn't really involve the rotary. But somehow, merging into the rotary by turning right coming from Warner Street feels different, and I don't currently do it even if it's all clear after stopping.

[intuition-ist.livejournal.com]

I was stopped by the police a while back when I tried to do that. I came up Broadway to the right turn, and the traffic in the rotary was stopped by the red. No one was in the crosswalk, so I proceeded to turn right onto Warner. The policeman claimed that "yield to traffic in the rotary" means "even if the traffic in the rotary is completely stopped". No ticket but a warning.

[ceo]

The thing I wonder about is separated right-turn lanes with their own dedicated traffic light, e.g. going from 16 eastbound to 2 westbound at Alewife. I stop on red there, but I get honked at.

[rmd.livejournal.com]

I think that if a "you can only do this" lane has a special red light, that's saying "don't do that".

My personal uncertainty is turning right from eastbound Broadway to Medford St - there's no right on red, but there's an occasional green arrow, and the egress from the parking lot also has a light and this crosses the path I'd take to turn right. So is the right turn really a simple right turn?

[ams16.livejournal.com]

I always get angry honks at the intersection of Chestnut onto Mystic (60 onto 3) near Arlington Center. I don't think you should be able to go at a dedicated red light to a right turn, but I don't know the rules.

[keithn.livejournal.com]

The Boston Globe had an interesting article about weird turn on reds a few months ago that answers your question IMO: http://www.bostonglobe.com/metro/2013/11/10/curved-right-red-until-things-get-complicated/63vNZKil27VYzZZkRPpVeJ/story.html

Here's the important part:

So, in short: If that bend to the right is puts you on a different road, it counts as a right turn. But if your gentle right-ward curve is simply a contour as you continue on the same thoroughfare, it’s a no-go: You must wait patiently at the red light.

“Quirky, no doubt,” Verseckes said. “But those are the rules.”

So all of the "questionable right turns" on the map are legal right on red turns, unless otherwise posted. All of them are a turn from one named road to a separate named road.

[bikergeek.livejournal.com]

Thanks. I remembered reading that somewhere but couldn't remember where.

[pekmez.livejournal.com]

Hmm, how about at the intersection in Medford between Boston Ave and College Ave? I always did believe that Boston Ave westbound to College Ave northbound was a right turn "onto another road" as above, but then they redid the intersection and now there is still no "no turn on red" but there is a painted straight arrow showing the path from one named road to the right onto another named road, and a painted left turn arrow showing the path from one named road onto the continuation of that named road - I figured that implied that "painted straight arrow" should not be done on red, and "painted left arrow" implied yielding to oncoming traffic as in a left turn, but have always wanted to say "WTF" to Medford since that intersection was redone.

FWIW in that case I generally do just wait for the light nowadays, but do want to feel safe-ish using the crosswalks and don't feel like I can trust when cars will and won't decide to go and perhaps ignore the crosswalk. I hope that when the new green line stop gets built they fix it, because by then my kids will be crossing at that intersection all the time without me, I expect.

[puffy-wuffy.livejournal.com]

You are awesome! Thank you.

[curiositykt.livejournal.com]

I have added years to my life by moving to a place where I don't have to go through this rotary at least 2 times a day.

I hate it from a pedestrian point of view, a driver point of view and a biker point of view.

It is the most convoluted mess of an intersection I've ever seen.

I like rotaries. This is not a rotary. I don't mind 4 way intersections with lights, this is not that either. This is a circle in hell.

[bikergeek.livejournal.com]

So much this.

One downside to rotaries (or traffic circles, or roundabouts, whatever you want to call them) is that they're usually kind of unfriendly to bikes and pedestrians. The engineers who tried to "fix" the Powderhouse rotary chose something that made it *worse* for everyone involved. Who the hell thought that putting signals *in* a rotary was a good idea?

[http://users.livejournal.com/_meej_/]

In this whole rotary, though - aren't the lights only ever solid (as opposed to flashing) reds when the entire intersection goes into pedestrian-phase mode?

In which case, by standard traffic design, there are *supposed* to be No Turn on Red signs.

I agree that, given that there aren't, there's definitely a question-mark here. But if there's a dedicated pedestrian-scramble-intersection phasing for the lights - especially one that's push-button-timed only - it's my understanding that there really are supposed to be signs up here...

[chenoameg.livejournal.com]

Oh how I miss the "Pedestrians only" red and yellow setting of my childhood. (In the Boston area even. I guess standardizing right on red killed it.)

[pekmez.livejournal.com]

Yes, the light only turns solid in pedestrian mode, and it would make sense that that should mean "no turn on red signs" preventing a vehicle from crossing any of the crosswalks while the rotary is timed to let pedestrians around. But the lights affect enough crosswalks that often the pedestrian is crossing a part of the rotary that does not affect any of the crosswalks that the right turning vehicle enters.

[en-ki.livejournal.com]

Rotaries are really simple once you realize they're not a special separate kind of thing: they are just circular roads, normally with two lanes. When you enter by merging, you yield because you're coming from the right; you have to signal to change lanes within the rotary or exit the rotary; and so on. (So yeah, all those people who drive blithely through the rotary without yielding or signalling because they're taking the next exit and it looks like a straight line to them are Doing It Wrong.) If you're coming at the rotary straight on, you're making a right turn and all the normal right-turn rules apply.

[sparr0.livejournal.com]

I agree with this wholeheartedly. Everything about a rotary, or even a pseudo-rotary like this one, is just the normal rules of the road applied to a series of nearby intersections with a curved road connecting them.

[greyautumnrain.livejournal.com]

I think those turns should be legal, but I can see them being argued as not.

The real problem is that red lights at a rotary kind of defeats the whole purpose of a rotary, and the red lights at that particular rotary a cause some pretty major snarls during anything but light traffic. The red lights are for pedestrians who are crossing straight through the rotary, and I've thought for ages that a pedestrian overpass would be a much better solution. Of course building one isn't free.

[pekmez.livejournal.com]

Some of the states of the red lights are NOT for pedestrians who are crossing straight through the rotary, although they are coupled to the lights for pedestrians crossing the straight through. Crossing straight through the rotary does contribute more significantly to delaying automotive traffic for longer, because the pedestrian needs to trigger both the west half of the rotary's red lights and then the east half's (or vice versa.)

The pedestrian button red lights also affect traffic exiting the rotary into several streets - Broadway eastbound, Warner St, Broadway westbound, and I believe College ave towards Davis as well. If a pedestrian presses the button there, it generates a red light that is intended to stop traffic exiting the rotary past those crosswalks, and the traffic exiting the rotary is generally a much larger concern to me than the traffic entering it (who at least was supposed to stop and look in the first place.) I don't think the current solution is great, mind you - even when the traffic in the rotary gets a red light for pedestrians it baffles enough of the drivers that I frequently see the red light get ignored. But you also can't realistically put a pedestrian overpass in place to cross from one side of Warner to the other, one side of Broadway to the other, one side of College to the other, etc as well as various of these points to the center. I might nuke the center access entirely, myself - but you still need a way to make crossing any of the streets where drivers might exit the rotary at high speed safer.

I transit the rotary on a daily basis as both a pedestrian and a driver, most days. I never enter the center island unless I really feel like seeing the spring flowers in bloom. If I want my kids to get to school independently at some point in the future as they get a bit older, they will need to go across 2 exits from the rotary which are both tied into the walk buttons at the crosswalk (although generally at times when there is a crossing guard present.)

Another minor peeve I have with the current intersection: a pedestrian can't get from point A to point B in one button press without hurrying and crossing on the diagonal. If traffic is light, I go around the rotary as a pedestrian without using the walk lights at all. If traffic is heavy enough to be concerned about cars doing unpredictable things, I generally start at Powderhouse park, push the button to get past traffic exiting onto broadway eastbound while they have a red light, then from the island halfway across broadway cross on the diagonal so that I have also crossed the traffic in the rotary exiting onto warner st while the light is still red. Then I can finish crossing in front of the Warner St crosswalk entering the rotary even if the light has changed, at which point I am crossing in front of a vehicle that has a stop sign and is supposed to be looking before they drive anyway.

[koshmom.livejournal.com]

Question about RTOR: If you're obviously turning right, and the light is red, and the streets are clear of traffic and pedestrians, are you OBLIGATED to turn right on the red, or is it optional? I ask because I've gotten some really obnoxious honkers behind me when I stop at a particular intersection near my home. I think this is a "no turn on red" area, and over the years there's been a NTOR sign there, then not there, then there, etc. I suspect some local takes the sign down, and it's down until the city discovers this, then has to assign money to fix it, then the sign's up for about 2-3 months then it disappears again. I also know that it really is quite hazardous when people turn right there because the visibility is such that the right-turning driver can't always see either a person turning left, or traffic going straight, and since the intersection is wide those 2 types of traffic (with their own green) have gotten quite up to speed, and often almost hit a right-turn-on-red driver. I stop most of the time, and it really angers drivers behind me.

[sparr0.livejournal.com]

I expect it's as optional as proceeding forward in any other situation where you're allowed to. Which is to say, if you don't do it when people are stuck waiting behind you, then you're obstructing traffic.

[josephineave.livejournal.com]

I hope the RTOR is legal because I've been doing it for years. (Though right turn from Warner into the circle strikes me as illegal because College Ave. isn't close enough --- that's one I don't do).

Now, can we do anything about the overly zealous crossing guard at Warner? Seems he has never, ever heard of making a pedestrian wait, even if the red light cycle just ended.