Thursday, November 5, 2009

This Intersection Needs Help


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This is the view of the intersection at the 8th Avenue entrance to Royal Square Mall, home to my closest Safeway, Starbucks and Liquor Store (priorities, people). I travel through this intersection several times per week, both as a pedestrian and a driver. I'm not sure what it is about this particular intersection, but it is like a magnet for car accidents and near misses.

Maybe it's the confluence of a couple of factors:
- There are three traffic lights within a one block stretch of 8th Avenue. One block! The traffic light I am talking about is in the middle and I wonder if drivers are busy looking at the next light and just simply don't see the light right above their heads. In any case, I can think of seven times in the past year where I have seen a car blast right through a red light on 8th Avenue (and not a yellow light run, but fully and completely RED for several seconds). Two of these were near misses for me as I turned left out of the parking lot onto 8th and had to slam on the brakes to avoid a collision.
- The pedestrian markings for crossings within the parking lot are kind of weird. One is on an angle to the door from a parking row increasing the time it takes for a pedestrian to get across; the other one crosses very close to the lighted intersecion. It feels to me like drivers are just a little bit less patient with waiting for pedestrians, especially when they can see the light just beyond the crosswalk is green and if they could just get around this confounded pedestrian...

I know that they had to re-engineer traffic along this stretch when the Safeway was renovated and expanded and I remember reading that this was all approved by council as the best option. I'm not sure how it could be changed for the better as I know I am no traffic engineer, but it seems to me to be worth re-examining before someone gets seriously hurt. Certainly drivers should be more patient and pedestrians should be very aware of the traffic around them in the parking lot, but with darker, shorter days ahead, this seems to me to be worth re-examining (hopefully before someone is seriously hurt).

2 comments:

  1. and to make things worse it's next to a school playing field and playground. And...drivers coming around the corner off McBride can't see around the bus at the bus stop.

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  2. ITA- when that light at safeway went in I said that will be bad-
    and I will shamefully admit that I ran it once too! Some days it is really deceiving-

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