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Roslindale Square becomes jampacked at unyielding circular intersection
By adamg on Fri, 06/02/2023 - 4:48pm
Erica Fletcher reports Boston police and firefighters had their work cut out for them this afternoon trying to untangle two cars that careened together at the oddball intersection of Washington Street with itself and South Street at the tip of Adams Park - and dealing with the resulting traffic nightmare at the start of the afternoon rush.
The intersection consists of the southbound side of Washington disappearing into South Street with a curved lane coming into it from the northbound side of Washington Street and Cummins Highway - with a yield sign for drivers coming off Washington northbound and Cummins.
Fletcher also shows us the Mini Cooper and the mini SUV without first responders in front of it.
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Comments
There is a yield sign…
…for the northbounders making the boomerang left. Still it’s a weird intersection.
Might Makes Right
Clearly the Mini driver forgot that yield signs don't apply to big tough pickup trucks.
That’s not a pickup truck.
Please stop.
Yield seems a mere suggestion
Agreed, half the drivers roll past that yield sign without a care in the world.
Turning off Poplar back onto Washington St. is weird too. The middle lane is supposed to go straight, but many times both the middle and right lane drivers try to turn into the same lane.
I love Roslindale Square in general, except when having to drive through it.
Yield is kind of subjective
In this case, they definitely didn't yield. I make the move all the time, and my goal always starts out with keeping oncoming traffic from slowing down, but then a minute passes and the line of traffic stretches onto Cummins Highway, so my goal is to not have this happen.
And by the way, the "middle" lane is supposed to continue on Poplar Street, but as the right lane was once the bus stop, people are accustomed to heading up Washington Street in that lane.
The annoying yield and annoying Poplar thing pales in comparison to the weird idea that you can make a left turn from the right lane on Corinth Street. It's like no one has ever read the rules of the road.
Yep!
Changed the story to reflect reality.
All too common
I see this on my bus ride back to the square fairly often. People don't want to yield and it turns into a quasi game of chicken.
Is it time?
Hear me out, what if Washington Street were 2-way? No more going around Adams Park. It would save gas, reduce the gridlock, make that little bit of Poplar Street a little more sane, make the crosswalk from the park to Wallpaper City less harrowing...IDK
It Once Was
Washington was 2-way until the early 1960s. This was due to the placement of streetcars and also the replacement trackless trolley service. That continued with buses until changes were mandated.
The traffic signals at Washington-Cummins and Washington-Corinth cannot be synchronized due to offsets created by pedestrian access signals that stop all traffic. Even today, they cannot be connected with modern tech. More importantly, the gridlock created by the 2-way traffic prevented emergency vehicles from getting through that set of intersections. This was especially a problem for fire apparatus coming west on Cummins.
You may find it interesting that Poplar, back at that time, was 1-way in the opposite direction from Washington to South.
The plan back then, even with streetcars and electric buses gone, was to reverse the direction of Poplar Street, then use Adams Park to create a traffic rotary scenario. When activated it did in fact relieve the congestion, and gave some semblance of order to an otherwise difficult series of intersections.
Not long after a suggestion was made for a Belgrade Ave bypass road. This would have started at Washington-Basile and go across the land now occupied by the health center, through the Taft Hill lot, and exit around Citizens Bank. It would have been 2-way allowing for Belgrade-bound traffic to bypass the business district. After several studies and the need to take land by eminent domain, that plan was dropped.
So suggestions that Washington return to a 2-way system is totally disregarding why the traffic pattern is the way it is now, which BTD seems to like to do these days. Ignore the how and why of current patterns, and more importantly... refuse to talk about history and how it got that way. So they are destine to repeat the mistakes of past generations.
The current pattern fixed a serious problem. It is not perfect but it works.
Changing the timing at intersections just outside of the business district may help alleviate some of the back-ups now. Going back to 2-way will simply reinstate a past problem that was fixed and given today's volume, make it worse.
It's just not safe to drive
It's just not safe to drive through Rozzie without police escort.
When is Boston Traffic gonna realize that the park IS a rotary?
Just because it's not completely round, doesn't mean it's not a rotary. Adams Park is a rotary. People traveling northeast on Washington St who make a left to go around the rotary (and head towards South or Belgrade) are already in the rotary.
The worst sign is the "Yield". This is the only rotary in the State that people IN the rotary have to Yield for people about to enter the rotary. The sign needs to face the people going southwest on Washington St. Those people feel that they're just "entitled" to fly into rotary with impunity.
Boston Traffic wake up - Let's follow the rules practiced everywhere else. Stop the insanity.
Don't stop now!
Buddy, you were *so* close, you almost flipped it!