Detour Ahead
Pretty much any day of the week during peak demand hours, traffic backs up on 2nd Street downtown, in both directions. And the reason is fairly obvious to the reasonably observant; left turns.
It only takes one person wanting to make a left from eastbound 2nd onto Main, or from westbound 2nd onto Broadway, to stack up waiting cars like cordwood, engines idling, exhaust belching, tempers simmering. Once the light turns yellow, the waiting motorist can execute the maneuver, meanwhile stranding a half a dozen or more at the light.
I've proposed for some time that eliminating left turns at either of those intersections would be a benefit. Now there's some science to back it up.
UPS has developed a routing methodology for planning delivery trucks' itineraries. The core idea? No left turns. A division of UPS, Roadnet, has embedded this concept into a commercial logistics software package it furnishes to other large delivery-oriented customers, such as Pepsi and Anheuser-Busch. Roadnet estimates that customers using the software save over 54 million gallons of fuel per year. That's over 150 million dollars, with a concommitant reduction in emissions.
These savings can also accrue to individuals, as well. An Oregon family recently conducted an experiment using the traffic flow software, and saved $3.69 per day in fuel consumption. That's nearly $1000 per year. Could you use an extra thousand bucks?
And those benefits don't even take into consideration the wear and tear on the patience and good will that waiting for a left turn (or for someone ahead to make a left) can exact. If Chico is serious about being a "green" city, and make a real contribution to reducing greenhouse gases and all the rest, perhaps it should seriously consider prohibiting left turns at high-demand intersections. It's certainly worth a try.
Comments
No left turns at those two intersections? Sounds too logical for this city. I'm surprised Alan Gair hasn't proposed a traffic circle. He'd probably boast that England doesn't have problems with left hand turns.
Posted by: Val Montague | March 15, 2007 11:13 PM
I kind of doubt that, actually. I'm a fan of roundabouts, in the right circumstances (pun sort of intended), but obviously West 2nd Street is not suitable.
Actually, Mr. Gair and I have been collaborating recently on downtown revitalization strategies, and it's amazing, or perhaps amusing, how closely our inclinations are aligned.
As for traffic flow through downtown, I think sensible people who think about it for more than a nanosecond recognize that if they need to come into downtown from the east and then go south on Broadway, that the ideal solution is to simply approach via the 3rd Street one-way corridor, making a left turn uncontested and impeding no one continuing westerly. Likewise, someone traveling easterly from campus on 2nd Street ought to have figured out by now that the best way to go north on Esplanade is to either go down a block and make the left at Wall, go around the block, or drop down to 4th Street on Broadway or Salem. The additional couple of blocks would take less time and spew less exhaust than sitting at the light through two or three cycles.
Posted by: Alan Chamberlain | March 16, 2007 07:37 AM