Dear Bay Area Traffic Engineer,
What are you thinking? Yes, I know it’s hard to coordinate hundreds of thousands of drivers every day. I get that. But I’ve seen better. Much better. And since we live in a place where the attention span of the average driver is somewhere around 2.1 seconds*, your job is as important as ever. Let’s discuss.
courtesy aqui-ali via Flickr
Light scheduling. Why is it on a super busy expressway, that it takes merely one car, in a matter of seconds, to trip a light on a small cross street? The timing of these lights are atrocious. There are even some lights in Sunnyvale which do not have a working trip altogether.
Carpool lanes. They don’t work, at least not here. This isn’t really specific to the Bay Area, as they work counter to the flow of traffic. That’s one extra lane everyone else could be using in an area where lane real estate is at a premium. Check out 101 when the carpool lane ends after Redwood City. Traffic is smooth, until the carpool lane picks up again. Get rid of them.
Freeway ramps. No, it is not a great idea to have a singular off ramp for off and on ramp traffic (ex: 262 to I-680). It’s an accident waiting to happen.
Crosswalks. Blind crosswalks do not work. (ex: Mountain View) It’s a constant game of chicken. Heck, those yield signs are better than nothing. 9 times out of 10, I can’t see the pedestrian, so there needs to be some sort of flashing light signifying there’s a pedestrian crossing (see any central coast town for examples). There are even some cases where a stop sign altogether is in order.
Long islands. Given that most people here can’t make a U-Turn to save their lives, there should be more options to make left turns on to crossing streets. There are some stretches of El Camino which go on for almost a mile without being able to make a left.
Construction. No, it is not acceptable to close off an entire freeway for construction before 12am. Why I see this happen is beyond me.
Public transit. This is technically another issue, but I just wanted to quickly point out that public transit options here are far from optimal. It really shouldn’t take me an hour to get across San Francisco. In fact, anything going East-West in the Bay Area is fairly sketchy. I guess we’re afraid of throwing off the Earth’s orbit by traveling along the latitude.
The Drivers. What can I say? This one isn’t your fault.
This is really just the short story. I can go on, but I won’t. There are things here which should have been fixed yesterday. I hope there’s room in our new-fangled budget to hire more you (or at least fire some of you).
Sincerely,
Ed Gutman
*Based on personal observation.
Well said babe.