What's with traffic signals (Houston, San Antonio: moving, cars, area)

[10scoachrick]

Originally Posted by centralaustinite

Completely sincere. Why wouldn't I be? I have seen it resolve issues including mistimed traffic lights.

I reckon they have performed many 'studies' of Parmer/Avery Ranch Blvd in the 8 years we've been here. Maybe they are trying to punish the folks driving across the crick from Cedar Park

[CarnivalGal]

I think I have said this here before, but Austin traffic lights have some of the worst timing of any city I have every lived in.

[cBach]

Originally Posted by Weatherguy

In the last month or so, I've encountered a new situation at traffic signals at least a half dozen times. Last week, for example, I was going to make a left at Metric on westbound Parmer. I had already sat in the left turn queue for about five minutes, and then it was my turn to proceed at the next left turn signal. I was car #3 in the queue. The light turned green, and the cars in front of me moved quickly, but the light turned yellow before I could even get to the light. I still made it, but no one else did.

It happened twice today at other intersections here in north Austin. In both cases, the left turn signal lasted about 3 seconds. But then on the next cycle, the signal length was normal.

In all cases, there were many cars waiting, so there wouldn't be any rationale for giving these queues such short signals. There was a lot of horn honking and obviously furious drivers.

Is this just another case of malfunctions or something deliberate on the part of the city/TXDOT? Anyone know what's going on? It's crazy.

This is the new strategy on some intersections where you're turning from a highly busy road onto a less busy road. What happens is that they go through a two cycle left turn loop. The left turn signal is only present every second green light cycle. The other cycle it is either reduced or not present.

This is one of the new strategies they are using instead of widening roads.

[Powered_by_Espresso]

Originally Posted by CarnivalGal

I think I have said this here before, but Austin traffic lights have some of the worst timing of any city I have every lived in.

I totally agree. It's somehow even worse in Cedar Park.

[PRND321]

Originally Posted by cBach

This is the new strategy on some intersections where you're turning from a highly busy road onto a less busy road. What happens is that they go through a two cycle left turn loop. The left turn signal is only present every second green light cycle. The other cycle it is either reduced or not present.

This is one of the new strategies they are using instead of widening roads.

How exactly does blocking the left-most lane help with traffic without widening roads?

[Kion]

Originally Posted by CarnivalGal

I think I have said this here before, but Austin traffic lights have some of the worst timing of any city I have every lived in.

You've obviously spent a limited amount of time in San Antonio or Phoenix.

[DashRiprock]

Originally Posted by ashbeeigh

I can't tell if you're being sarcastic or not.

No, that's actually what you're supposed to do. Whether it does any good or not, I don't know.

My pet peeve, makes me ragey everytime light is the interchange at Braker and Mopac, specifically if you are going north on the Mopac feeder and need to loop back to South MoPac (for example, if you were leaving Arbor Walk and wanted to go back towards downtown). It's bad enough that they didn't put a designated U-turn lane there to begin with, but the left turn light on west bound Braker cycles such that you cannot make both lefts in the same cycle, ever.

[Weatherguy]

Originally Posted by centralaustinite

Just call 311! I do that all the time if I think a signal light isn't functioning properly. The traffic engineers will check it and make sure there are no malfunctions and if it is a monitored light, look at the data from it and possibly change the timing.

I did call 311. No response yet.

[Weatherguy]

Originally Posted by cBach

This is the new strategy on some intersections where you're turning from a highly busy road onto a less busy road. What happens is that they go through a two cycle left turn loop. The left turn signal is only present every second green light cycle. The other cycle it is either reduced or not present.

This is one of the new strategies they are using instead of widening roads.

If that's the case, then it has only made things worse. Much worse. It only backs up traffic more on the busier of the two roads.

So yesterday, I was on Grover headed south, and wanted to turn left onto Koenig. I sat through four light cycles because traffic on Grover was backed up for blocks into the neighborhood. During one of the cycles, not a single car was able to turn left because the light was so short and there was so much oncoming traffic. No left turn signal, of course.

I finally get on Koenig and make it to Lamar, where traffic was backed up causing a wait through 3 cycles. All of this happened around 9:30 a.m.., well beyond what should be "rush hour". But this is Austin.

[Weatherguy]

Might as well bring the following up as well. All over the city, bus stops are located next to intersections, and in most cases, the buses stop in the traffic lane (no pull out lanes for the buses). So day after day, we encounter buses stopped at green lights. This of course backs up traffic extensively in that lane. Some drivers try to pull into the next lane, which sometimes results in collisions. Contacts with Cap Metro regarding this issue have been ignored.

In some cases, "fixes" do make things worse. For example, for years if you were traveling west on Steck, you could merge immediately onto the northbound Mopac access road. But a few years ago, TXDOT took away the merge lane, so that you now get backed up sometimes all the way to the underpass on Steck because cars can't get onto the Mopac access road until all lanes of Steck have a green. It is complete nonsense. When TXDOT did that, I called TXDOT but no one could explain why the merge lane was removed. The response was always "we'll look into it".

I'm thankful that Mayor Adler is actually talking about Austin's gridlock. He may be the first to do so.