07-11-2019, 01:47 PM
taylortbb Wrote:I don't see how cars bunching up from Erb and Caroline is a problem, the north end of Willis Way stations is 228m from Erb/Caroline. That's space for a lot of cars to be stopped. Unless the concern is about blocking Father David Bauer, but that still has room for 71m of stopped cars. They could also add signage at Father David Bauer about not blocking the intersection.
As for drivers ignoring the bus-only left turn, I feel like signals could do a lot for that. The signals facing drivers northbound on Caroline should just always be a red light, with a white bar for buses and green arrow for right turns. If a car attempts to make a left they'll just never get a green light, and eventually they'll learn that attempting to turn there is futile (as most won't be willing to blatantly run a red).
Do "Do Not Block Crosswalk" signs exist? They could just use one of those...
I've observed cars turning left onto westbound Erb from Caroline, and I'm not around there that often. While that doesn't really bother me, I'm surprised that the engineers' response was anything other than "Thanks for bringing that to our attention; we'll refer that to the police for enforcement," which is equally a cop-out but makes logical sense.
The engineers' solution (that able-bodied people will just cross mid-block and the crosswalk is at the south end for accessibility reasons) makes a lot of sense until someone is struck by a car. Then, there will be no investigation into the many different factors that produced the collision and proportionate assignment of culpability. To the police, it will simply be a case of "she was jaywalking, even though there is a crosswalk right over there."