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| Re: ''World Class Bus Rapid Transit'' for Woodhaven Blvd... lol (299781) | |||
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Re: ''World Class Bus Rapid Transit'' for Woodhaven Blvd... lol |
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Posted by BrooklynBus on Wed Nov 12 12:45:58 2014, in response to Re: ''World Class Bus Rapid Transit'' for Woodhaven Blvd... lol, posted by RIPTA42HopeTunnel on Tue Nov 11 06:25:48 2014. SBS can work with or without prohibiting left turns at Woodhaven and Metropolitan. It just happens to be that left turns are prohibited on the current conceptual plan. If you're concerned, you should have gone to the meeting and made your voice heard, or at least asked for an explanation of how it's going to work.But if you do not prohibit left turns you either can't have three through travel lanes as DOT is insisting on, or you have to suspend the bus lane in that area. Suspending the bus lane is the best idea since you can't have one over the LIRR tracks anyway. The merge for buses will just occur before Cooper instead of after Metropolitan. I have been informed that others attending the meeting also expressed the same concerns about Metropolitan and Rockaway Blvd as I have. I assume in the Congested Corridors report, which isn't online. I'd also like to see that information, but traffic volumes and level of service don't usually mean a lot to the general public. If they have nothing to hide, why isn't it on line? Well, perhaps someone in the public is a traffic engineer like yourself who could educate the public and ask intelligent questions if those data were made public. This is just like the MTA presentation to the public on the B44 SBS. They insisted they had all this data from computer modeling but refused to divulge any specifics of what that data showed. They would only say it was favorable. Sounded very fishy. Just like what they are doing now with Woodhaven. If they are being honest, why in six months have none of the 20 or so questions posed by the Queens Public Transportation Committee, some requesting data, not been responded to? Guess what time southbound traffic peaks on Woodhaven Boulevard! Slide 7 So what are you trying to say? Since I was there at 3 PM, and the slide says the peak is from 3PM to 7PM, that I have seen the peak turning movements? If so, then you know absolutely nothing about travel on Woodhaven Boulevard. The peak isn't reached at 3PM and maintained at that level until 7 PM. Traffic volumes begin to increase at 3PM, reach their peak between about 5 to 6 PM and then decline until 7 PM, when they start rapidly falling. The number of cars traveling on Woodhaven at 6PM is much more than at 3 PM, perhaps as much as 50% higher. Then it would probably benefit from a protected left turn phase. Did you make the turn both ways using a stopwatch to verify that it was "about" two minutes? A protected turn lane as well as a parking ban in the right lane (which I initially said would be required and you didn't recognize the need for) would be required. You said that long trucks could make the left from the "non-existing right lane" although cars could be parked there. Without parking restrictions that turn for trucks may not even possible. No I did not use a stopwatch. What difference would it make if it was one minute and 45 seconds or two minutes and 15 seconds? The point is that it is about two minutes when traffic is far from its heaviest and when the left turn into Metropolitan is still allowed. Someone's 15 seconds might have been ruined! I didn't realize that being a traffic engineer entitles you to pull numbers out of thin air without even seeing Woodhaven in operation. If those half dozen cars were not passing me on the right while I was waiting for clearance to make my left turn, probably four of them would have missed the green signal and delayed them an additional 30 seconds until the next traffic cycle. If there were other cars wishing to make that left turn, they might have missed a second signal and been delayed by over a minute. I must have missed where right turns from Woodhaven to Metropolitan were being prohibited, especially where the concepts show a right turn arrow on the pavement. I never said right turns from Woodhaven to Metropolitan would be prohibited. What I said was that if left turns were prohibited from Woodhaven to Metropolitan from both the south and the north as is currently proposed, the following would occur. The 11 cars I saw lined up to make the left from Woodhaven northbound onto Metropolitan westbound, would now be required to turn at Cooper and would be going westbound at Cooper. The other 11 cars I saw waiting to make a left from Woodhaven southbound to Metropolitan eastbound, would also be funneled into Cooper westbound on the same block between Woodhaven and Metropolitan. That is 22 extra cars for each traffic cycle. Let's look at each turn separately and assume the cycle is 60 seconds for Woodhaven and 60 seconds for Metropolitan and 15 seconds for the protected left turn phase. Eleven cars make the turn. Then the following cars have to wait two more minutes for the next left turn phase. That means that in one hour, there are 7 cycles in 15 minutes or 28 cycles in one hour. So 28 times 11 equal 308 extra cars for each turning movement or 608 vehicles turning per hour, not 1,320 vehicles per hour. Now that is for 3PM, just at the beginning of the peak. If we also include current traffic on Cooper, (cars coming from Woodhaven south and from Yellowstone) we are probably talking about 1,000 vehicles per hour. If Woodhaven has peak hour traffic of 2,000 vehicles per hour in four lanes, that is about 500 cars per hour per lane. So Cooper could not possibly handle 1,000 vehicles in only one lane. At 5 PM we could expect traffic demand to increase by about 50 percent higher than it is at 3 PM. Cooper could not possibly handle that type of traffic volume without becoming hopelessly congested even with two lanes of traffic, one of which would become a left turn lane near Metropolitan. That brings me back to my original point that the turn to Cooper could add as much as ten minutes to someone's trip. (The same would also be true at Rockaway Blvd.) Let's say Cooper is given two-thirds of the green time at its intersection with Metropolitan because of the additional traffic put on it, wouldn't that back up traffic on Metropolitan? All these possibilities need to be worked out now before it is decided if left turns should be banned. It is irresponsible to first decide you will eliminate left turns, and then worry about the ramifications later and how to best deal with a bad situation when it is too late to redesign the SBS. Seeing how DOT eliminated the 88th Street alternative by failing to realize it was used as a bypass alternative and made congestion worse, and how they also eliminated another bypass route during times of heavy congestion (by eliminating southbound traffic on Redding Street near Conduit Blvd) they have little interest in reducing traffic congestion. They are more concerned about making traffic move slower. That's why I have little faith they will do the correct thing this time to keep traffic moving as a result of instituting SBS. |
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