Long Red/Green Traffic Light Cycles - Your Thoughts.. (Phoenix: employment, construction)

[Voebe]

I only notice the inadequacy of the "Walk" signs.

[wase4711]

Originally Posted by DetroitN8V

Apparently you think you've seen it all in the short time that you've lived here. I can assure you that the lights are not malfunctioning. As others have mentioned too, there are plenty of times during metered hours when there is no other car on the ramp. I was just on the eastbound 101 on-ramp from Cave Creek Rd. in late morning and blew by a metered light. It was on and I was the only car entering the freeway. I don't know why you find this occurrence so hard to fathom.

once again, as you frequently sarcastically respond to anything I post, I guess I have "seen it all" in my short time here..

I've traveled over a million miles of interstates around this country, and I know how metered ramps are supposed to work..but, since you often portray yourself as a expert on almost every subject, I'll just leave it at that..

[DetroitN8V]

Originally Posted by wase4711

once again, as you frequently sarcastically respond to anything I post, I guess I have "seen it all" in my short time here..

I've traveled over a million miles of interstates around this country, and I know how metered ramps are supposed to work..but, since you often portray yourself as a expert on almost every subject, I'll just leave it at that..

It has nothing to do with any of that. It's just another foolish statement and a claim that is plain silly. Do you really believe that you've seen all on-ramps in the valley and their conditions during metered hours to be such the authority on this? What exactly is your point? That we're all lying about being the only car on a metered ramp?

[Magnum Mike]

Originally Posted by AZ Manager

You don't think there are thousands looking at this problem? This metro alone likely has 2-10 in each individual city then there is NY, LA, SD, Houston, Hong Kong, etc. Lots of people are trying to solve the problem across the globe.

When I mentioned "That's debatable", I meant that I doubted they hired engineers for that specific project, but it's more than likely Phoenix and/or Maricopa County hired a consulting firm to resolve issues related traffic congestion, and if their solution was to increase the time of traffic light cycles, I'd be asking questions.

Go in under the existing infrastructure, we put the utilities less than 10 feet under the surface. Time and cost are a problem today but won't be forever. I'm sure in my lifetime, I'm 33 so still lots to go, I will see something come along that is cost effective and works for this metro. I'm also expecting to see this metro become the next Chicago or Detroit so I'm not entirely optimistic about it.

They are thinking about an underground tunnel as a 2.7 mile test in west Los Angeles along or under the 405 freeway. A friend who lives in southern California saw this topic and he sent me a link to an article. If approved and built, it would eventually be a network of underground tunnels under some areas of Los Angeles for regular road traffic, which according to the article, it would transport vehicles on "skates"(???). Sounds like they'll be tolls attached with it also, but it's an interesting concept.

When I read the web article, the first thing that came to mind was: An underground tunnel in an earthquake-prone area. They have the ability to build earthquake-proof structures, but keep in mind that such structures would be able to withstand earthquakes up to a certain magnitude, and a catastrophic collapse may/will occur with anything above that magnitude.

But this is in Los Angeles, as to whether or not we'll see anything like this here, I doubt it, and if it happens, it may not be in our life time.

The concept of underground tunnels has already become reality in other places in the world, one example is The Chunnel, which crosses the English Channel.

https://therealdeal.com/la/2018/04/1...ovals-from-la/

https://urbanize.la/post/elon-musk-t...cept-tunnel-la

[Magnum Mike]

Sounds like a separate discussion has been started about lights in "metered" freeway on-ramps. With the exception of the on-ramps on the I-10 freeway for 7th St and 7th Ave near downtown Phoenix, as far as I know, the on-ramps of our freeways past the metering lights have one lane.

In most cases, the access road sections that precede the on-ramps and the metering lights have 2 lanes and the purpose of such lights is to make sure that 2 vehicles in 2 parallel lanes don't get on the on-ramp at the same time, and those metering light cycles are very short. If you've entered the west-bound I-10 from 7th Ave, and there are no vehicles in the adjacent lane, you may have noticed that the light stays red until you drive up to it, then it turns green to allow you on the on-ramp. This usually happens later in the evening rush hour. Most metering lights stay inactive during the weekends and non-rush hour periods.

In the past, there was only one lane on the access road and I've seen the metering lights stay red for a short period of time, typically under 5 seconds during rush hours. This was in the 1980s and I believe part of the 1990s. I haven't seen those older metered on-ramps in a while, but using the metering lights concept on existing traffic lights on surface streets at some major intersections, during periods of heavy traffic might be worth considering. It's basically setting the red/green light cycles to a much shorter time span to keep traffic moving thus preventing traffic back-ups, and drivers from sitting at an intersection through multiple long red light cycles, which does happen after exiting north-bound I-17 on surface streets north of Thomas.

[AZ Manager]

Originally Posted by Magnum Mike

When I mentioned "That's debatable", I meant that I doubted they hired engineers for that specific project, but it's more than likely Phoenix and/or Maricopa County hired a consulting firm to resolve issues related traffic congestion, and if their solution was to increase the time of traffic light cycles, I'd be asking questions.



They are thinking about an underground tunnel as a 2.7 mile test in west Los Angeles along or under the 405 freeway. A friend who lives in southern California saw this topic and he sent me a link to an article. If approved and built, it would eventually be a network of underground tunnels under some areas of Los Angeles for regular road traffic, which according to the article, it would transport vehicles on "skates"(???). Sounds like they'll be tolls attached with it also, but it's an interesting concept.

When I read the web article, the first thing that came to mind was: An underground tunnel in an earthquake-prone area. They have the ability to build earthquake-proof structures, but keep in mind that such structures would be able to withstand earthquakes up to a certain magnitude, and a catastrophic collapse may/will occur with anything above that magnitude.

But this is in Los Angeles, as to whether or not we'll see anything like this here, I doubt it, and if it happens, it may not be in our life time.

The concept of underground tunnels has already become reality in other places in the world, one example is The Chunnel, which crosses the English Channel.

https://therealdeal.com/la/2018/04/1...ovals-from-la/

https://urbanize.la/post/elon-musk-t...cept-tunnel-la

Interesting articles. 9 months to go 2.7 miles is a lot of time. If they could speed that up ten fold like the article says they want to we could have a good mass transit system here with all of our sprawl.

As for earthquakes, they are surface events like a hurricane on the ocean only disrupts the surface of the water. There is a very small subway system in CA already that hasn't had any real problems with earthquakes.

[Valley Native]

Back to my comment about Phoenix's lopsided streets: if the reasons for this are due to heavier traffic volumes in the afternoon hours, this concept is outdated because both sides of the streets can be equally congested regardless if it's morning of afternoon. The older streets that have this lopsided "feature" are seriously overdue for a redo ... not only because of the lanes, but because of the streetlights being only one side, which makes no sense. Major thoroughfares like Northern, Bethany, Glendale, and the numbered streets should have 3 lanes on each side with medians & streetlights located in the medians. Something like this design:

[ElleTea]

What does everyone think about the use of the reverse middle lane like on 7th Street? While I get the theory of it, I find it to be dangerous not only for those going N/S but for the people that don't understand you are not allowed to turn left during those times depending on which way traffic is flowing. It is also frustrating when your destination would require a "not allowed" left or right turn and you have to figure out how to go up and around and back to get there.

For instance, I was coming from the Camelback and 24th St area and wanted to go to the Chase bank on 7th St and Glendale around 4PM to have something notarized. I had to turn here and there to finally get there as I could not turn left coming from the south, and going the long way around I also found I could not turn right on Central to get back, so I had to go all the way to 7th Avenue and back. (if you can follow that) In other words, I had to make a very big loop! The Chase bank employee called it the "suicide lane"

[hikernut]

Originally Posted by ElleTea

What does everyone think about the use of the reverse middle lane like on 7th Street? While I get the theory of it, I find it to be dangerous not only for those going N/S but for the people that don't understand you are not allowed to turn left during those times depending on which way traffic is flowing. It is also frustrating when your destination would require a "not allowed" left or right turn and you have to figure out how to go up and around and back to get there.

It's too non-standard to be safe, IMO.

[Magnum Mike]

Originally Posted by Valley Native

Back to my comment about Phoenix's lopsided streets: if the reasons for this are due to heavier traffic volumes in the afternoon hours, this concept is outdated because both sides of the streets can be equally congested regardless if it's morning of afternoon. The older streets that have this lopsided "feature" are seriously overdue for a redo ... not only because of the lanes, but because of the streetlights being only one side, which makes no sense. Major thoroughfares like Northern, Bethany, Glendale, and the numbered streets should have 3 lanes on each side with medians & streetlights located in the medians. Something like this design:

Hi Valley Native - Right now there's really no room to correct the lopsided older streets by adding lanes without having to encroach on existing properties that are on both sides of the streets, like Glendale, Northern and Dunlap Avenues on the west side, which were at one time considered to be "way out in the boonies". Basically, to make such improvements would be like trying to build a large mansion on a very small old foundation, and the foundation wasn't built to anticipate future expansion