Octavia Blvd: A dangerous illegal turn every 3 minutes.
Yet another morning commuter makes an illegal right turn onto the new freeway onramp at Octavia this morning.
Monday's serious accident at the intersection of Octavia and Market is focusing attention upon drivers making illegal and dangerous right turns. Tomorrow's demonstration involving the San Francisco Bicycle Coalition, Walk California SF and other groups is scheduled for 8:00-9:00 AM. Commuters might be a tad shy about making illegal turns during the demo, but we thought it would be interesting to see how many drivers err on a more typical commuting day. What can be done to improve things? How many illegal turns were made during one hour this morning? Find out after the jump.
17 drivers on eastbound Market made the illegal turn onto the freeway during the 61 minutes from 8:00 to 9:00 AM this morning. That's a lot - about one illegal turn for every two cycles of the intersection's lights. (It takes about 93 seconds for the lights to cycle during the AM commute.) Here's the mise en scène:
Every driver making this turn must know it's illegal. You can't ask for more notification what with three large no-turn signs. It might be nice to have another "freeway ahead" sign further up Market, but oh well. The drivers appear to be opportunistic turners - they will turn onto the freeway if there are no bikers or peds impeding access. Some drivers appeared to slow down in anticipation of making a turn, but decided not to, for whatever reason.
A little fence of reflectorized white plastic sticks separating the bike lane from the right lane (placed on the rectangular box formed by four white lines) would make the already awkward turn even more awkward for drivers. That might help. A high-resolution video traffic camera could easily document these illegal turns - that's another proposal. The basic problem is that cars don't merge into the bike lane as in a normal right turn - drivers are simply making unexpected sharp turns. Many people are offering various solutions, any of which would be an improvement over the current situation.
Public safety isn't the only reason why Octavia Boulevard fails to live up to the claim it's an "urban success story", but those are issues for another time. Fixing this right turn situation should be job one.
A diverse group met this morning to discuss ways of preventing more accidents.
Audi A4: Chariot of the Yuppie. This driver typifies the reverse commuter taking the illegal shortcut to (the) 101.