Traffic Circle in RTD
Today’s RTD article has much of the same information that was in the tv report. I didn’t know it was scheduled to go before committee today. (According to comments by David Hathcock it will not be heard by committee today.)
The proposal is scheduled to be considered today by the Land Use, Housing and Transportation Committee and by the full council Nov. 9. The projects haven’t been designed, but construction could start by the end of 2010, officials said.
Kathy Graziano also chimes in but doesn’t speak in favor or against the traffic circle but acknowledges the issues.
Council President Kathy C. Graziano, whose 4th District includes the Forest Hill area, acknowledged the roundabout might be a tough sell, but she credited the Department of Public Works for seeking neighborhood input and said the intersection has issues with left-hand turns and that Forest Hill Avenue could benefit from slower speeds.
“You can’t cross that road anywhere,” she said.
I’m surprised that Kathy G would consider a project that would take a bite out of Forest Hill Park, for which she supposedly has a particular fondness.
“You can’t cross that road anywhere,” she said.
You *really* wouldn’t be able to cross that road if a traffic circle was built to allow a continuous flow of traffic. Don’t let it happen, KathyG!
Yeah, what Dan said. Stop signs are cheap and slowed traffic in the Fan. Why can’t we investigate that possibility on Forest Hill between Westover Hills & Roanoke?
I agree with the comments above. I think this project has not been thought through. It looks like the City got some federal funds to build roundabouts and is looking to put them wherever they can, whether or not they work or are needed. We need more stop signs and perhaps another light on Forest Hill Avenue not a roundabout that will only increase traffic flow.
I suspect that the single most effective way to alleviate traffic issues on Forest Hill Avenue and other similarly situated thoroughfares is to reduce the tolls on Powhite Parkway and Downtown Expressway. How many of these speeders live in the ‘burbs and don’t want to pay tolls? Maybe someone should poll the driving public to determine how low a toll would need to be to get them to use the expressway…and then calculate whether or not revenues would increase with the increase in volume.
That and actually enforcing existing traffic laws…you know, like ticketing speeders, the drivers who routinely block the fire station.
After listening to a local convenience store employee wax poetic about freely driving 50+mph in Richmond because “ain’t no one gonna give you a ticket: everybody know that”, it’s easy to see that Richmond has a reputation for being lax in this area. That should change.
Idea: how about eliminating the toll to get ON Powhite NB from Forest Hill Avenue?
That alone would likely siphon a lot of speeding drivers off of FH Ave eastbound before they reach the more densely populated section of the neighborhood.
Just a thought.
Update here: http://hillsandheights.org/2009/10/20/traffic-circle-update-each-to-be-evaluated-separately/
As a pedestrian and cyclist in Church Hill, I’ve found that the traffic circle on 25th Street makes that large intersection much more manageable. Cars only come from one direction now (your left), and the dividers that lead up to the circle make it so that you can cross one lane and safely wait if you need to.
I’d like to know whether PDM’s suspicion about toll avoidance really plays a role in this. I don’t live in the burbs, but if I did, I’d still want to take the easiest route to work, regardless of tolls. Jockeying through stop-and-go traffic in the H&H neighborhoods every day would not be worth the savings from avoiding the tolls.
But there’s a lot I don’t understand about the burb mentality, so who knows.
Technically, aren’t our neighborhood … the original burbs?