I totally agree with the solution to this situation. I have gotten caught at the light trying to take a right. Good suggestion!

What about cars exiting the garage that want to go into the Boott Mills or turn left? There's not enough room to pull out and get straight into that leftmost lane from the far right garage exit bay. Or there may be traffic in either or both lanes making it impossible to get over to the far lane. Make both lanes straight optional? I've never seen this as much of a problem. Next issue!

It could be dangerous to allow both lanes to go straight to Boott Mills because there is only one lane on the other side of the traffic light. Legally you can't have cars merge into one lane in the middle of an intersection! For better traffic flow I still maintain that the right lane should be right-turn only; otherwise the one car that wants to go straight to Boott Mills will block an entire lane of cars that are ready to turn right. It's relatively rare that someone exiting the garage should want to go straight to Boott Mills, and if they want to turn left, well they need to move to the left lane anyways because we can't have both lanes turn left into a one-lane street.

Assigned to Traffic Engineer for study.

Alex, office of CM

The matter of which lane the through movements should be in is moot, because of another overriding factor. The pedestrian phase at this signal is an exclusive phase, meaning that all traffic must stop when the pedestrian Walk signal is activated, because pedestrians may be crossing any of the legs of the intersection when the Walk signal is on. For this reason all right turns on red should be prohibited at this intersection so that drivers are not in conflict with pedestrians during the pedestrian phase. This is most critical when a pedestrian is attempting to cross John Street towards Bridge Street on the approach in question. The pedestrian could be walking in front of the stopped left-turn lane and about to walk in front of the through/right-turn lane when the vehicle in the through/right-turn lane decides to turn right on red.
Until and unless the pedestrian phase can be changed from an exclusive phase to a concurrent phase, the right-on-red prohibition must remain and signs should be posted informing motorists of this restriction.
I did notice that the green time for French Street is much longer than the green time for John Street. I will take a closer look at this to see if the timings can be modified for more efficient traffic flow at the intersection.

Thanks for fixing this issue!

You are correct about the exclusive phase of the pedestrian lights at this intersection, but note that the pedestrian light only activates when a pedestrian pushes the button which is rare because not many pedestrians cross this particular intersection. The majority of time of that intersection is spent on John st. car having a red light and french st. cars having a green light, and pedestrian lights being red on all sides. At the times when the pedestrian light is red on all directions, I don't see any reason why the right lane cars shouldn't be able to turn right when it's safe to do so. This is why I'm reopening this issue.

I also think that all exclusive phase pedestrian lights in various intersections in Lowell are inefficient because they stop traffic on all directions, and most pedestrians become impatient after pressing the button and jaywalk before the pedestrian light turns green anyways, leaving the entire process pointless. But that's a whole different matter for which I probably need to open a new issue.

I agree completely with your thoughts on exclusive pedestrian signals. When we have the opportunity we are changing them to concurrent signals. But often the existing signal controller equipment is not capable of accommodating the change.
I will take a look at the volumes and the timings to see if changes can be made to the signal. Past counts have shown very few through movements on this approach, with the heaviest movement being the left turn onto French. It is possible that the through movement has increased with the occupancy of the mill across the street.

I can also concur that the through movement toward Boott Mill apartments is very low (usually one or zero cars per signal change). Also the left-turns is relatively low (usually 2 or 3 cars per signal change). The right-turns are by far more popular than the other two (5 to 10 cars per signal change). That's why I always feel guilty being on the right lane when waiting for green light to enter Boott Mills as I would be blocking a column of 10 cars that could just as easily turn right if it wasn't for my car blocking their way. So to keep the traffic flowing during the rush hour, I usually wait on the left lane before entering Boott Mills even though it's technically illegal. If you drive to Boott Mills during rush hour you'll see my point of view that it just doesn't feel natural to be on the right lane when waiting for green light toward Boott Mills. The drivers behind sometimes beep, and I don't blame them because it's not obvious that going forward toward Boott Mills is in fact an option in that intersection.

Thank you