Description

This intersection is very dangerous due to left-turning vehicles from E John onto 12th Ave E (SB).

I had an office at 1123 E John for a year that looked out over this intersection and, aside from my own personal experience, saw tens of very, very close calls where pedestrians were nearly struck by cars turning left onto 12th Ave E (SB) from E John (WB). The volume of EB traffic on E John tends to cause people making that left turn to frequently try and "win" against oncoming traffic by darting SB onto 12th - drivers are more concerned with avoiding collision with oncoming vehicular traffic that they frequently fail to check for the presence of pedestrians in the south crosswalk. This is a terrifying intersection at all times of day, though the most dangerous time seems to be at times when traffic volume and speed are both relatively high (e.g. just before and after AM and PM peak rush hour traffic).

A proper fix for this issue would not be to cross our fingers and rely on increased vigilance on the part of drivers, nor would it be to add additional sign pollution in the area, but instead to install a protected left turn lane and signal on E John in both directions. This would involve removing a handful of on-street parking spots from each side of the road - all of those spots are already removed daily during rush hour - removing them during all other hours would not be a significant loss given there is more than ample available parking in the area.

An additional benefit of this change would be to speed up Metro service on high-frequency core bus routes #8 and #43 where buses that run at 10-15 minute peak headways may often have to sit through one or two 30-second light cycles waiting for left-turning vehicles blocking traffic. This may not seem like a lot of time for one bus, but given 12-20+ buses pass through this intersection every hour, this adds up to a lot of wasted time for both Metro and the many, many passengers aboard each bus that goes through this intersection.