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The Surprising History–and Deadly Consequences–Of Right Turn on Red

• josephcsible 4y ago
  > Several local news segments about the DC RTOR legislation amplified the voices of people with no expertise in traffic safety who complained that the bill would increase traffic. > “That is a reasonable first impression,” Schultheiss says, “but people don’t think about how RTOR works in reality.” In situations where “cross streets have lots of traffic gaps and long traffic signal cycle lengths” and it’s easy to turn on red, the problem is “improper signal timing on the corridor.” In that case, a better way to speed up traffic would be to shorten the lengths of traffic signal cycles on the cross streets. If this is true, how about we improve the signal timing first, and then eliminate RTOR only if doing so actually did remove the need for it? > Ending RTOR is a minor enough inconvenience for drivers that it’s unlikely to convince many of them to opt for other forms of transportation, but it is “a baby step in creating an urban environment that is more supportive of walking, bicycling and transit,” Schultheiss says. “The only path forward to reducing auto-dependence and the resulting traffic congestion is for our society to decide to shift our subsidy model from sprawl and highways to transit and housing.” As usual, encourage people to switch from driving to other options by making driving worse, rather than by making the other options better.