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Citizen complaint of the day: Sign, sign, everywhere a sign
By adamg on Sun, 11/15/2015 - 1:24pm
A puzzled citizen wonders about the thought process that led a city worker to place a crosswalk sign right in front of a no-left-turn sign at Columbus Avenue and W. Rutland Square in the South End.
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Comments
In Braintree, there is a
In Braintree, there is a pedestrian crossing traffic light where they put the crosswalk sign directly in front of one of the traffic lights.
The city worker is just doing
The city worker is just doing his own thing. It's ok to march to the beat of a different drummer. Respect.
Actually it was a private
Actually it was a private contractor and done as part of the curbing work recently completed out there. They'll be on the hook to remedy.
Planning and insult to injury
Not related to crosswalk signs, but another example of frustrating progress that makes you question priorities...
Living in (and driving through) Upham's Corner, it's been bad enough these many, many, many months of variable levels of activity (or inactivity) on the street/median/crosswalk/signals/curbs work on Columbia. Today, it started to annoy me just that much more with the realization not only that one face of City Hall doesn't seem very motivated to finish something related to safety, service and quality of life in a timely manner - there is some face of City Hall that thinks it's important to get our neighborhood Christmas tree at least 11 or 12 days before Thanksgiving!
Drivers will ignore both
Drivers will ignore both signs, and the city/police don't enforce almost any traffic violation in Boston (though they seem to work pretty hard on ticketing for not paying the meters, which causes much fewer injuries and deaths in Boston) so it'd be cheaper to have neither sign and just admit its anarchy.
Wrong
BPD runs traffic patrol here now and then: and was ticketing fail-to-yield crosswalk violations a block away last week. (Which they do fairly regularly).
A friend also received an 'illegal left turn' from Mass Ave onto nearby Huntington last year.
The crosswalk is there 24x7x365
while the left turn prohibition is only part-time for a small fraction of the day. So, I'd say the crosswalk sign is more important.
That's exactly why the restricted turn sign needs to be visible
The crosswalk paint is there 24x7x365 (except when it's not due to the city's inability to repaint crosswalks in a timely manner). The only way to know that there is a restricted turn there is to see the restricted turn sign. Both signs should exist, but the restricted turn sign should take precedence.
As an aside, restricted turn times on these signs need to be much larger. You can't read the print until you're almost in the intersection, at which point you've unwittingly slowed traffic behind you.
Turn prohibitions that are
based on restricted times, and are not 24/7/365, are nothing more than a political "gimme" to local residents who don't want cut through traffic using their streets during rush hour.
As such, they should be totally abolished.
Depends on location.
Yes, this is generally true.
But in places without a dedicated turn lane keeping all lanes open to traffic not turning left can be a benefit.
South End Forum
This seems like a trivial matter so I'm sure the South End Forum is all over it.