Handling traffic at deadly Rio Bravo intersection
WANTING A SAFER RIO BRAVO FOR 2017:
NQ Dewey says in a recent email about the intersection of Rio Bravo Boulevard and Del Rio Road SW that “there are six crosses (marking fatal wrecks) now” and there are many more not memorialized with descansos.
“In the 30 years I have lived a block from this intersection we have managed to have a stoplight installed after five deaths. But then people would speed down Del Rio to make the green light. Five years of petitions later we got some speed humps on Del Rio north and south of Rio Bravo and that helped slow the carnage. Then the light at Del Rio and Rio Bravo was refurbished with ‘car sensitive detectors’ in the intersection . ... So now the green light for Del Rio changes only when a car sits there for three minutes or more, and I’ve timed it to an average of 10 seconds. What that means is that ... drivers on Rio Bravo are barreling down Rio Bravo at 65 mph and cannot possibly stop.”
NQ asks if the signal timing can be adjusted and if the 45-mph speed limit can be enforced or a “your speed is” trailer can be parked there.
Bobby Baker, traffic control administrator for Bernalillo County, says, “The traffic signals along Rio Bravo are coordinated for 45 mph from Broadway to Del Rio . ... The yellow times are set based on the width of the intersection and the speed limit. For additional safety, there is 1.5 seconds of all red time — all four approaches are red for 1.5 seconds.”
In response to NQ’s concerns, Baker “adjusted the northbound green time multiple times and recently received feedback that it was working better. The longest wait time is (from) 3 to 7:30 p.m. (and) should be about 90 seconds. It’s programmed to run half cycles during the AM and during the day, which means that the cycle length — the time it takes to completely cycle to green for all approaches — is half as long as all of the other intersections. For example, the cycle length for the AM peak time is 120 seconds for all of the intersections from Isleta to Broadway. The cycle length at Del Rio is 60 seconds. Running a half cycle reduces the wait time but also reduces the green time by half.”
As for enforcement, residents can call or email their area command (both Albuquerque Police Department and Bernalillo County Sheriff’s Office) to report a trouble spot and request traffic enforcement.
ONCE A ZIPPER ZIPS, THAT’S IT:
That’s the point made by Robert Landry in an email responding to the state Department of Transportation’s advocacy of the “zipper merge,” which has drivers using all open lanes up until a merge needs to happen, then taking turns like the teeth of a zipper.
Robert says drivers here are already doing this, just when they see the signs saying they need to merge. “This is a true ‘zipper merge’, not the last-minute merge advocated by DOT,” because “after your jacket was zipped up it would be bad to introduce another ‘tooth’ in the closed zipper chain at the bottom.”
“What happens at a traffic bottleneck is after all the polite drivers have ‘zipper merged’ there are a few who, for one reason or another, travel to the head of the line and try to force their way in at that point. Naturally, there are some drivers who resent this behavior and thereby begins ‘road rage.’ The ensuing road
rage is not caused by the polite and smart driver who merged ‘early’ — when told to by the sign — but by the impolite driver who is too impatient to wait his turn and tries to cut in at the head of the line.”
NMDOT’s video example has none of the so-called polite early merges that leave a drivable lane empty, but has
all drivers using all lanes to advance as much traffic as possible, then taking turns to merge where the lane drops. WISH I GOT RED-LIGHT
CAMERAS FOR XMAS: This fall Franklin Halasz emailed, “My wife and I watched THREE cars turning left from Harper to Wyoming after the light for through traffic on San Antonio had turned green. And this isn’t an unusually busy intersection. Traffic cams are needed throughout the city to curb this behavior — even though I’ll probably be caught, too.”