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

[cos]

What makes those right turns "questionable"?

[sparr0.livejournal.com]

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

[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.

[cos]

Since none of the yellow arrows are on any of my usual routes through there, I don't remember: Are there any "no turn on red" signs there?

[sparr0.livejournal.com]

There are not. I have edited my post to indicate this.

[clevernonsense.livejournal.com]

It's fine/legal to turn right on red there (presuming you yield to pretty much everything)--I used to do this at least once a day when I lived in the area. At the time, almost everyone did (10+ years ago).

The more questionable one for me was the bottom left corner--as in, can you turn into the rotary on red ;) (I'm pretty sure you can't and I didn't, but a fair number of people would.)

[sparr0.livejournal.com]

I don't enter the rotary on red from College Ave northbound, because it doesn't feel like a "turn". That's a big part of the distinction for me. 90 degrees is a turn. 10 degrees is not. 50 is questionable.

I think the truly most questionable one is in the top right corner, whether or not people in the rotary can turn LEFT on red to remain in the rotary (that is, the people facing warner st who want to continue around the rotary to be facing college ave and powder house blvd).

[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.

[ceo]

No, because both streets have to be one-way in the appropriate direction, and Warner St isn't.

[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.

[sparr0.livejournal.com]

The part you're turning from is one-way (and isn't Warner St, yet).

[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.

[bikergeek.livejournal.com]

Mine is Waverly Oaks Rd., turning right onto Trapelo Rd., on the Waltham/Belmont line (https://www.google.com/maps/@42.390747,-71.1977,3a,75y,44.64h,73.64t/data=!3m4!1e1!3m2!1sqeM_Nqw0kBzVLnCoSWtouA!2e0).

I think a lot of these signals were placed before the Feds forced Mass. to legalize right turn on red, and nobody really gave a lot of thought to how these signals would have to be reconfigured to accommodate or correct for RTOR.

Another peculiarity is Mass.'s definition of what a red right arrow means. In 49 states that I'm aware of, it means "right turn movements not permitted now." In Mass., the driver's manual casually states unless there's a NTOR sign posted, it means the same as a red ball, which means that RTOR is permitted.

[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.

[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.

[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...

[bikergeek.livejournal.com]

yeah, it's a similar situation to eastbound 60/Trapelo Rd., which I posted about above. My attitude is, if there's no sign, it's legal. If they want to make it NTOR, they should put up a sign. (And if you think there *should* be a sign there--I don't know the intersection that well, maybe there should be--by all means encourage the town to put one up.)

[bikergeek.livejournal.com]

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

[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.)

[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.

[pekmez.livejournal.com]

I have always treated it as no because continuing through the rotary is not making a turn - the rotary direction is the direction of through traffic, and there is a red light for through traffic.

However, when the light turns back from red to flashing yellow, it drives me batty that people entering the rotary do not yield to formerly stopped traffic in the rotary, as they would when that traffic was moving.

[pekmez.livejournal.com]

I never knew that, and learned to drive in one of the other 49 states - when I see a red right arrow, I stop until I see a green one or a green light. Must not really be a MA driver!