Almost the entire city is a traffic nightmare. I brought up the issue of extreme speeding and tractor trailers using my neighborhood street to a City Councilor and was told that "in Burlington you cannot feel entitled to a quiet, low-traffic neighborhood." That is just the way it is. Except of course if you live lake front or in the hill section. Pay $800,000+ for a house and you might be safe from the distracted speeding drivers barreling through our "neighborhoods."

Thanks JKC - while I find that comment by your rep to be ridiculous, we are not even asking for quiet streets here, just basic safety when entering and exiting and using the sidewalks in front of our homes!

Hopefully, the constituents that you speak up for, everyday families, young children and pedestrians, will get as much consideration as the very few hard-core cyclists that DPW bends over backwards for. DPW has partly become an extension of local motion, an organization that does good work, but many believe the bike lane overreach has made the city less safe for the majority of BTV citizens.

With the way the weather is here and the street conditions, it is not a matter of build it and behaviors will change. That will not happen. But the zealots do not want to hear that. They think that they know better and want to bend others to their will. The issue here as a prime example.

Thank you for reporting this issue. The Department of Public Works will now begin its investigation into the matter.

Seriously, this is just plain lazy negligence and all of these projects that can’t ever seem to get completed are infuriating and literally making me consider selling my house and moving out of town. It’s just one huge construction zone and is becoming less livable and less enjoyable every single day, and yet the races continue to increase. For what? So I can fund Miro’s giant hole in the ground downtown? So he can cut down trees and ruin the natural feeling of city hall park by covering it with a giant cement water thing that will only work maybe 3 months out of the year and also no one wants? So freaking mad

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It was a great sense of accomplishment to turn the new signal on for regular stop and go operation October 23, 2018. Five months of work building it, much more time before that to conceptualize, plan, and bid out the equipment and dirt work. Major traffic flow is not straight through but is an "ell" shape, requiring special phasing, a more sophisticated controller, and the No Turn On Red sign to protect two crosswalks from an almost continuous westbound right turn, while keeping things generally moving as much as possible. This signal sits at the bottom of Battery, the last in a string of coordinated signals. As such, it is set to follow the others cycle lengths, with a non-flexible timing that works well for most of the day. One piece that did not get installed (yet) is vehicle detection. There was not enough time to get this done concurrent with the other work. Getting out from under the construction crunch gives us a chance to do a better job of planning this final piece. We have crossed into our new fiscal year July 1st with new budget items. One of these items is to issue an RFP for detection equipment at this intersection, also Battery & Main, and St. Paul & Howard, which will be rebuilt similarly with signals on top of 10 foot aluminum poles. Video and radar for all-way detection is being considered. These are usually mounted 20 feet high for a good view of approaching traffic. With our 10 foot signal poles, and the tree canopy on Battery, this is not practical. But, talking with vendors, we have 2 video and 2 radar options that are viable. I lean towards radar. Afternoon traffic coming south on Battery sometimes backs up on Maple and spills back through the intersection. With vehicle detection, we should be able to sense this, and run the signal free, separate from the others on Battery, and be more responsive to immediately local traffic. In coordination, detection would allow skipping of Maple Street for lack of traffic, or give it more green with higher volumes. The new controller gives us more options than previously available. There will be times that running in coordination will be better, and times that running free makes more sense. To be able to pop in and out of coordination is not "normal" for a stand-alone controller. For the amount of money spent on this intersection so far, this would be the icing on the cake that makes the signal as fully responsive as possible.

This issue was recategorized from Traffic Signal Problems to Transportation and Parking Improvement Request.

What would these planned improvements do to improve the efficiency and safety of PEDESTRIAN crossing--the core of this reported issue? (While generally a law-abiding citizen, I confess to being someone, as reported, who has crossed to the shade or out of the cold wind against this and other lights after activating the beg button and waiting interminably in the sun or standing still in the cold when no automobile traffic is approaching.) If traffic signals favor vehicles over pedestrians, people will drive vehicles instead of walking/biking/busing. Let's tune some radar/video toward bikers and pedestrians. Do I understand correctly that the proposal for Howard/St. Paul will kill the green for Howard in the absence of automobile traffic? If so, how will pedestrians and bicyclists safely and efficiently cross St. Paul St., recalling that the intersection study recenty identified pedestrian safety as the key deficiency of this intersection?