Description
Due to the Temple Street bridge closure, there has been an extreme increase on downtown-bound traffic on Prospect. Similarly, there has been a reduction in traffic going westbound on Grove. The intersection should have a longer green light for traffic headed south from Prospect onto College and a shorter green light on Grove in order to improve the flow of traffic.
4 Comments
CT Livable Streets Campaign (Registered User)
Not sure I agree with this, unless conditions at the College/Wall crosswalk are significantly improved first. With a greater traffic flow coming down College, drivers would be more likely to ignore this crosswalk, which presents a hazard and inconvenience to pedestrians.
Because drivers on College between Grove and Elm must drive slowly and yield to pedestrians, extending the green light at this location could cause traffic to back up into the Grove/College intersection.
Peter (Registered User)
I understand your concern about the crosswalk as I have observed (on both foot and by car) that drivers regularly ignore it. It would be nice to have some sort of traffic signal that pedestrians could utilize to stop traffic for short intervals to cross. However, at least from a twice daily anecdotal perspective, the only time that cars come close to backing up into the Grove/College intersection is when the city bus fails to pull over to the curb and blocks the entire lane.
Given the capaciousness of the intersection generally, and my personal experience, I would not be overly concerned about the risk of traffic backing into the intersection. A greater concern in my opinion is that the traffic going southbound on Prospect backs up into the intersection at TRUMBULL and Prospect, thus truly blocking a small and vital intersection. When traffic back-ups extend over a block, you know there is a serious traffic problem!
Another possible remedy, although one that should be seriously be considered if the Temple Street bridge is going to be out for more than a year, would be to make the stretch of Grove between Prospect and Temple two-way, so that the traffic could make use of Temple south of Grove.
john (Guest)
Peter (Registered User)