Every day I get frustrated at some intersection where I'm not allowed to make a left turn. Heading South on Hampton at Arsenal. Heading North on Grand at Choteau. Heading South on Grand at Gravois. Sometimes it's not too difficult to find an alternative route if you know the area. Other times it's downright impossible. Why does St. Louis hate left turns at major intersections?

they would fix um, but they've sunk all their money into their webpage

I noticed this too going east on Gravois the other night (after going to Lava Lounge, a bosnian bar/club, very cool) There are no left turns on street after street. I even noticed one at Grand and Washington. Why in the F can you not take a left onto Grand from Washington? too much traffic during fox shows?



I ALSO hate "left on arrow only" intersections. Like I can't handle looking to see if cars are coming before I venture out across the oncoming traffic lanes. This seems to be a new policy. If everything is always done for "safety's sake" then why don't we make taking a "right on red" illegal too?

JCity wrote:I even noticed one at Grand and Washington. Why in the F can you not take a left onto Grand from Washington? too much traffic during fox shows?

That one is a classic. I'll hit that one late at night after a show at the Creepy Crawl or something and there is NO oncoming traffic. They can't at least have a flashing light there and allow you to turn on flashing red?????

shinpickle wrote:they would fix um, but they've sunk all their money into their webpage

And that creepy eye thing on there is really bad...

http://stlouis.missouri.org/citygov/tra ... sp134x.gif



The city lights are so messed up in every way though, I find myself taking short cuts around some intersections just to avoid this. And whats with that new one at Grand/Chouteau, coming south on Grand. When the left signal is red can you still go straight? My favorite though, and this is not the city's fault, but drivers' fault, is at Grand and FPP, when people come off the parkway and just sit in the middle of the intersection. Whats up with that?

JCity wrote:I noticed this too going east on Gravois the other night (after going to Lava Lounge, a bosnian bar/club, very cool) There are no left turns on street after street. I even noticed one at Grand and Washington. Why in the F can you not take a left onto Grand from Washington? too much traffic during fox shows?



I ALSO hate "left on arrow only" intersections. Like I can't handle looking to see if cars are coming before I venture out across the oncoming traffic lanes. This seems to be a new policy. If everything is always done for "safety's sake" then why don't we make taking a "right on red" illegal too?

This annoys me as well. In fact, there's no worse example than the "left on arrow only" intersection at Market Street and Tucker Boulevard, right in front of City Hall. It might be a prudent idea at midday when there's a lot of pedestrian traffic during the lunch rush, but during the rest of the day it seems utterly pointless.



I'd like to believe the city will look into these intersections, but I'm inclined to think the city's streets department is still firmly locked in the horse-and-buggy era, especially since it's taken over five years to synchronize traffic lights in some parts of the city.

kustramo wrote: My favorite though, and this is not the city's fault, but drivers' fault, is at Grand and FPP, when people come off the parkway and just sit in the middle of the intersection. Whats up with that?

The Along for the Ride column covered this in the Post a couple of weeks ago. They said that yes, if you make a left onto Grand, you DO have to stop in the middle of the intersection if the light is red. It's just a really awkward setup.

Framer wrote:

kustramo wrote: My favorite though, and this is not the city's fault, but drivers' fault, is at Grand and FPP, when people come off the parkway and just sit in the middle of the intersection. Whats up with that?

The Along for the Ride column covered this in the Post a couple of weeks ago. They said that yes, if you make a left onto Grand, you DO have to stop in the middle of the intersection if the light is red. It's just a really awkward setup.

There's nothing "awkward" about it: it's just an extremely tight diamond interchange. There are two sets of traffic lights there for a reason. By not stopping in the middle of the interchange after turning left, you are setting yourself up for a nasty t-bone crash (I've witnessed one). This intersection just begs conversion to a single-point interchange.



Edit: As of 2009, don't listen to me!

^ Thats odd though, because I thought thats why they put up those signs last year that say "Do Not Block Intersection" I think west-bound and east-bound gets their own turn signal, not concurrently (although I may be wrong) so I don't see why you would stop there.

There are separate signals, and as far as I know you are supposed to continue through. If you don't continue through, you block southbound traffic on Grand. It's just one big intersection, not two.

Framer wrote:

kustramo wrote: My favorite though, and this is not the city's fault, but drivers' fault, is at Grand and FPP, when people come off the parkway and just sit in the middle of the intersection. Whats up with that?

The Along for the Ride column covered this in the Post a couple of weeks ago. They said that yes, if you make a left onto Grand, you DO have to stop in the middle of the intersection if the light is red. It's just a really awkward setup.

It is equally confusing when turning left onto Grand from the westbound Grand/Forest Park I-64 offramp.



It's been a while since I've gone down that way but if I remember right they'd installed the filters on the red lights, so that you don't see them when you're turning left.

Jumping back a bit, I guess I'll use my very first post on a subject I know well.



This city's left-turn problem is that it it doesn't seem to distinguish signal installations based on what type of left-turn phase the intersection has. For the protected-only left turn, the signals should be three-head: red/red arrow, yellow arrow, and green arrow. When turns aren't allowed, the red ball (or arrow) can be on (with a fresnel lens) so that left-turning traffic stops. You can't do that with the five-head signals this city uses, since you can't have the red ball and green ball on at the same time on the same fixture. This city is using the "left turn on arrow only" sign so they don't have to solve the problem of putting a green ball in front of a lane that can't do anything.



While I understand people's frustration at certain intersections and the lack of permissive left turns, there are some places where the protected-only left-turn phase is required (after all, if motorists really always knew better than the light when it's safe to move, there'd be no need for any signals anywhere). Out my window is the corner of Kingshighway and Laclede. Unlike its neighbor to the north (Kingshighway and West Pine), the tree in the median at Laclede almost completely blocks the view of oncoming traffic. They've correctly chosen a protected-only left-turn phase, but they're inexplicably using the five-head protected/permitted signal anyway. Consequently people missing the "left turn on arrow only" sign and trying to turn through a green ball are in even more danger. I have to agree that this is just laziness on the engineers' part, since this kind of thing is taught in the most basic transportation engineering courses.



Putting a green ball on a left turn signal should be reserved to where there's a permissive left-turn phase. Otherwise it's really confusing to people who move here from places where they get it right (as far as I can tell, that's everywhere else; for me, it's Pennsylvania).



To confuse people even more (but allay confusion in the long run), some places are even experimenting with a different signal design for permissive turns from exclusive left-turn lanes. Rather than putting a green ball in front of a left-turn-only lane (which dangerously implies that you can go straight from a turn-only lane), they're starting to use flashing yellow arrows to indicate the permissive turn phase. The signal goes from green arrow (protected turn) to flashing yellow arrow (permitted turn, yield to oncoming traffic) to solid yellow arrow to red. If there's never a protected phase, it only has three lamps, the two yellow arrows and red. Michigan, Minnesota, and Wisconsin, at least, are using these--for now with the sign in the picture, but the signs are set to be phased out as people get used to the new design. Personally I think it's the best system since it communicates maximum information with just the lights, and it is very flexible.



My question is why more lights around this city aren't set on permanent flashing. West Pine and Taylor has been flashing four-way red for at least two weeks and it's been just fine. Low-volume intersections like that just don't need full signalization. I don't know why they were installed to begin with. A few others around my neighborhood that I think would be better set to 24-hour flashing include West Pine at Newstead and at Euclid, Lindell at Des Peres (a signalized intersection with a glorified alley?!), and Kingshighway at Maryland (I don't care that it's new, it's not useful).



-asg



(Okay there's my long opening rant. I hope this is the start of good participation on this board, but my goal is that most posts won't be that long.)

Welcome to the forum. As long as your posts are informative, make them as long as you want.

I'm starting to think that quite a few of the signalized intersections in this town no longer meet the warrants you need to legally install a traffic signal. I've started to treat a number of signalized intersections as yield/stop sign controlled intersections when I'm riding my bike. Not going to risk a ticket though when I'm driving. Although, if I ever do get a ticket when driving in this town, I'm definitely going to look into the legality of the traffic control device(s) in the location where I got ticketed.

^you'd be surprised at the power an alderman has to control stopllight placement. I'd start a list here of my most hated ones, but it'd be too long.



The lights that are by my house at least:

Morgan Ford & Beck

Arsenal & Spring

Arsenal & Compton

Arsenal & Nebraska (What!)



Another thing is I think the City has some signals that are green longer on low travelled streets. I despise the light at Tower Grove & Magnolia. I rarely see any cross traffic on Magnolia and they get the longer green on two phases. I wonder if there is a way to have the city at least look into revising some signal timing so it matches traffic patterns.



edited for clarity

^Doesn't surprise me at all. Every city has aldermen or councilmen who lobby for new signals at the request of a handful of very local residents without consideration for the thousands those signals might affect. They might have control over the act of installation, but probably not as much over design and operation. I say let them install signals wherever they want and then just set them on flashing. That'll show 'em.



The intersection of Tower Grove and Magnolia has a lot of problems. I'm almost always on Magnolia, but I agree that puts me in the minority there. and the separate left turn phases for an intersection that size are asinine. The use of post-mounted traffic signals in the middle of the intersection (dividing the right turn movements into and out of the park) are also dangerous and another problem this city has (the McCausland/Clayton intersection is another place that comes to mind with those).



^^If the signal is installed by the city and all that controls it is city law, they couldn't be illegal. So you have to look for state or federal law that controls. State law always controls and federal law would trump wherever there's a federally funded road (interstates, e.g.). The federal law is the MUTCD (warning: 11.2 MB) and the state's rules probably aren't much different.



Speaking from my (postgraduate) legal training rather than my (undergraduate) engineering training, the fact that a signal installation doesn't conform exactly to spec won't get you out of a ticket unless the signal is so far off from what it should be that any reasonable person would interpret it to legalize what you did, which seems unlikely. You're more likely to convince a reasonable cop not to write the ticket than to convince a magistrate that an already issued ticket is improper.



Could be worse



[img]http://no-way-out-.freeonlinegames.com/images/4537.jpg[/img]



-asg

brickandmortar wrote:Morgan Ford & Beck

I hate that freaking light.