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Human Frogger at Dorchester intersection
By adamg on Mon, 09/10/2012 - 9:35am
The intersection of Morrissey Boulevard and Bianculli Boulevard - the main route into UMass Boston - is scary enough for pedestrians. But as you can see in Heidi Moesinger's video above, it gets even worse because when a pedestrian finally gets a walk signal - oncoming traffic gets a green light, too simply ignores the red light.
Via the Dorchester Reporter, which has been covering the perils of that intersection for awhile now. Hat tip to Wendy Schapiro for the headline.
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Comments
This is a bad intersection
This is a bad intersection but it should be noted that those driving/beeping at the pedestrian trying to cross are in a left turn lane, and instead are going straight (on the wrong side of the median). There's only one lane going straight here and it's often quite backed up during rush hour, while three lanes turn left. Def needs some new engineering but perhaps until then a cop every once in a while enforcing the left turn only lanes?
Yeah, those drivers are
Yeah, those drivers are actually blowing a red turn signal to avoid the long queue at the single southbound lane. It's totally nuts. The State Police need to redeploy someone there for a solid week or two to send a message because everyday commuters know they can just blow the light with no consequences.
They really should extend the
They really should extend the southbound light to two lanes, or this is always going to be a problem.
Couple issues here
Couple issues here that compound the problems this crap hole of an intersection:
1. The heavy flow lane that leads to 93 south should be three lanes, while the low flow lane leading to Umass boston should be one.
2. Nutjobs who feel the need to fly through this intersection illegally only to have to wait at another red light 400 yards down the road.
3. Cops who generally do not write tickets for traffic violations
While were at it why not start ticketing the people who commute up columbia through L st/Farragut road and go way over the speed limit and blow through every stop sign
I drive through here several
I drive through here several times a week on my way to UMB. It should be two lanes into UMB and two going straight. Three lanes going into UMB creates problems since you need to make a two lane shift to the right to orbit the campus. This becomes a slow motion merge-grudge match between us plodding old timers and the zippy new students who haven't realized the loop is a speed trap. It didn't use to be so bad with the folks going straight at the triple turn, maybe they moved a barrier or something. I used to turn left from the middle lane without a hitch, but now if I do that I risk getting hit by someone in the center lane going straight.
The Freeport "right lane must turn" is just the opposite, in that case I see no reason why a car couldn't continue straight, the lines on the road are painted for it and there's a long continuing lane on the other side of the intersection. I've seen troopers pulling people over by the Shell station who were doing nothing dangerous and probably were innocently confused, unlike the UMB light skippers.
This intersection is a classic FUBAR
Actually, when the walk sign appears in the video, oncoming traffic does NOT have a green light to proceed in the marked crosswalk. It is a clearly marked left turn only lane to UMass, but the traffic in the video is going around the traffic island and proceeding southbound illegally. Hundreds if not thousands of cars do this every day. The real problem is that the configuration of 3 left turn lanes, and 1 southbound lane is totally inadequate for the real traffic conditions,especially in the afternoon. So rather than wait for multiple light cycles in the one legal southbound lane, drivers use the left turn lane illegally to proceed southbound. This includes Boston Police and State Police.I use this intersection several times a day and I have never seen police enforcement, but I have seen plenty of police violating the law along with everyone else. It appears that the green light for the one legal southbound was changed at one point to allow more traffic through in the one lane, but it's still totally inadequate.
I drive this everyday
I have seen police enforcing the proper lane use at this intersection, but they seem more interested in enforcing the next intersection at Freeport St. There is a right turn only lane to head over to 93, but people go straight in that lane. The police (State and Boston) like to grab those guys.
There are these things called
pedestrian over-passes and under-passes. Don't know why Boston doesn't have more of them. It should
They have these things
They are called traffic tickets. I don't know why Boston doesn't have more of them.
Pedestrians don't use them
Most pedestrians are too lazy to climb up and down to use overpasses and underpasses. Today they need to be handicapped accessible, requiring long ramps at slight grade, so they don't fit in most urban locations.
The other option to make pedestrian crossing easier is to have the traffic climb up and down - an overpass. Some people fight to get rid of these too, for example the Casey Overpass is going. I guess they rather have all the traffic, cyclists, and pedestrians all contend at street level. Conflict is somehow more beautiful than elevated structures and easier mobility.
OK Cousteau
There is an underpass. It is called the bridge over the creek to the right. Bring you Hunters.
The intersection
at the corner of Morrisey and Old Colony (by JFK/UMass station, crossing towards Carson Beach and the fields) is just as horrible.
No, it's not
That intersection would work perfectly well if pedestrians even glanced at the wait/walk signs and considered following them.
All over Boston
Same problems on other Boston and state-controlled intersections (e.g., over the pike). Bring the camera to Milk St. and Washington St. near the Common (green arrow through walk signal), Purchase St. and Summer St., near South Station (stream of turning cars through two crosswalks during short walk signals), and in Newton, Washington St. and Center St. at the I-90W on-ramp (left two lanes of heavy traffic routinely ignore red light/walk signal). The Essex St. crosswalk at Surface Rd. fails to activate when traffic is stopped, activates only for maybe 5 seconds when at least 8 or 10 are required to cross, and then its neighbor crosswalk at Lincoln St. has cars coming around a sharp bend at speed during the walk signal.
So I agree with the poster - crosswalks in Boston and under state control are not correctly configured.
Check the video from 3:43 to 4:13
For 30 seconds, every one of those cars that aren't turning left are doing something illegal-going straight from a left-turn only lane. But it's the only way this intersection works at all.
What needs to be done is to move the traffic island left by one lane. Allow two lanes of traffic from the Morrissey feeder road to go straight. Also allow far more green light time for the feeder road to enter Morrissey Blvd. If every driver did follow the law at this intersection, traffic would be backed up 2 miles to Old Colony Blvd.
You can't just enforce a single-lane light that's red 90% of the time and say that solves the problem. Even a stop sign would be a better solution for that feeder road.
Mark is right.State should do
Mark is right.State should do exactly that.
That video is like watching
That video is like watching paint dry. I suppose there's a point to be made, but you're not going to make it to my by making me turn the video off and move on.
So essentially, you could
So essentially, you could fund the green line extension by putting a video ticketing camera here.
Or bicyclist ticket cameras in Cambridge, Boston, and Somerville
Several bills were submitted to the last legislative session to allow ticketing cameras. I don't believe any made it through to passage. There are many, many issues with ticket cameras including being outsourced like for-profit prisons. Another is that the yellow time at many lights is shorter than standards based on 85-percentile traffic speeds. If a study gets done to measure the 85th percentile speed, then the politically set speed limits get challenged as being arbitrarily low. Putting up cameras is not as simple as many think.
so stick a cop there.... the
so stick a cop there.... the intersection of Berkeley and Tremont alone would pay his wages
When did this intersection
When did this intersection get its current configuration? From Google's aerial photos, it looks like the bridge just south of there was recently rebuilt.
And what type of crack was the traffic engineer smoking when they designed this spaghetti? A triple left turn lane on the right side of three through lanes, plus a single through lane on the right that causes a huge backup?
And a thirteen-lane road between an urban college campus and a park? Are they *trying* to design the most hostile urban campus they can think of?
Mobility not a funding priority
The City of Boston seems too focused on proposing projects with bike lanes in them to fix intersection flow problems resulting in congestion and poor pedestrian safety. The Boston Metropolitan Planning Organization decides which projects get funded when, and they too prioritize bike lane projects.
To Dorchester Reporter:
DCR has no interest in relieving traffic congestion. They view congestion as well deserved punishment for not riding a bicycle, so good luck with such non-priorities. Second, traffic engineers only get annoyed when non-professionals try to tell them what changes to make or that their design was deeply flawed. Common sense is discouraged; traffic counts and computer simulation tools are used instead. Lastly, I thought MassDOT was supposed to take over roadways from DCR. Suggestion: If you want change, you have to emphasize that the project will greatly enhance multi-modal transportation while downplaying bad road design causing traffic congestion and resulting improvisation (as routinely practiced by cyclists everywhere).
Expect at least one engineer to say that the safety problem isn't bad design, but "an enforcement problem". They won't admit to bad design and instead make the problem something for police to address.
The unfortunate bottom line is that a big safety problem that has existed for years will take years more to fix in this state.
but it seems your
but it seems your waaaaahmbulance still can get through the traffic