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When snow covers traffic (and parking) markings people tend to be conservative on the pavement they use (park further apart than marked spaces actually are etc) So the traffic patterns shown by snow patterns bear only a partial version of reality. It would be interesting to look at the exact same views overlayed with the snow photos when the street markings can actually be seen.
Some of these do show sections that are unused (like photo 1 and 3), but one thing to keep in mind is that a greater number of people will go through an intersection instead of turning.
So in a situation like this
I suspect most people who turn do turn through the highlighted area, it's just more people go straight so the corners of the intersection will still have more snow.
I'm all about making streets pretty, but this is a little ridiculous. Plenty of larger vehicles would be completely unable to make turns with most of the proposed street diets here. That's not only a problem for vehicles, but also for pedestrians and bus passengers. Buses and trucks would be constantly running over the curb and endangering pedestrians who might be hanging out in the pedestrian plazas.
Not surprising that the road warriors are ticked off at you for showing this wonderful example of how we over engineer our roads for cars when so much more can be done with them. Look at my thread on the before and after pictures of NYC under Bloomberg - transformative.
I lived in the general vicinity (3-6 blocks) of those pictures for over a decade so I'm intimately familiar with all of those intersections.
East Passyunk Ave. runs diagonal across the grid. Since it's a one-way street the traffic on it moves northeast across a grid of other narrow, one-way streets. Big trucks avoid these streets to begin with and on the rare occasion that they do they know that they have to continue on 5-10 blocks until they get to one of the arterials that's wide enough to turn on to. That's just the name of the game when you're working in neighborhoods built out 150 years ago.
In most of the examples where you see few or no tire tracks is where it wouldn't be permitted to turn in the first place. For instance, where Passyunk crosses 7th St. - 7th also goes north so unless you wanted to go the wrong way down a one way street there's no reason to turn from Passyunk on to 7th or vice versa. Carpenter St. which also goes through that intersection is interrupted by a superblock just two blocks further east so unless you're circling the block there's little reason to turn from Carpenter onto Passyunk. Not that there's no reason to ever do it - just not so much that the extra 2 seconds it would take to execute a turn around a 90° corner would be that much of an inconvenience.
6 years ago this was one of those dead spaces where Passyunk crosses 11th & Tasker. http://www.uwishunu.com/wp-content/u...tain-680uw.jpg
Now it has a fountain, benches, lighting and a farmer's market every Wednesday for 7 months a year. Buses don't get stuck, trucks aren't crashing into buildings, cars aren't crashing into other cars, and the sky certainly hasn't fallen.
I can't say I'm surprised by the knee-jerk "that's ridiculous" comments or by being implored to "think critically" by people who are completely unaware of the context - that goes with the territory- but when you actually observe these intersections and how people use them you come to understand that these spaces are (or were) largely unused and that most of the time when people are using them they're doing so illegally.
I can't say I'm surprised by the knee-jerk "that's ridiculous" comments or by being implored to "think critically" by people who are completely unaware of the context - that goes with the territory- but when you actually observe these intersections and how people use them you come to understand that these spaces are (or were) largely unused and that most of the time when people are using them they're doing so illegally.
I'm focusing on this picture in particular:
Looking on street view, there's no sign that indicated drivers on Carpenter Street are banned from making a right turn onto Passyunk Avenue. Judging by the tire tracks through the snow, drivers do use this pavement to complete a right hand turn at this intersection (legally i might add).
The turning radius that would be provided isn't adequate. Drivers (including passenger cars, trucks, and SUV's) would struggle completing a right turn without driving over the shaded green area.
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