James Lucas

It seems that Tempe is taking a knee jerk police enforcement approach to its eight highest accident intersections, instead of studying the accident reports and the street design, to determine all the causes of all those accidents. I did not have access to the accident reports, so I just looked at the intersections for what they all had in common. First I noticed that each of the four high accident intersections on Rural Road have two left turn lanes and that Rural Road and each of the intersecting roads both had three traffic lanes in each direction. Then I realized that all of the eight high accident intersections had those two things in common. The two things that all eight high accident intersections had in common were three or more lanes of traffic on one or more of the intersecting streets and two or more left turn lanes on one or more of the intersecting streets. Another concern is that Baseline Road and Southern Avenue are often used by people who do not want to use the Superstition Freeway which is between those two streets. Would not a forensic analysis of the streets and accidents and road improvement be a much better long term accident reduction tool than enhanced law enforcement? Traffic calming approaches have worked well to solve problems elsewhere, might they be a better solution here? Would a redesign of Rural Road, McClintock Road, Baseline Road, Broadway Road, and Southern Avenue that reduced their traffic load provide a better long term solution to these high accident intersections? Since Tempe Transportation Department had a hand in the current design, and would understandably have a bias, should any study be done by an outside independent organization? When contacting Tempe, one is told that they have PROFESSIONAL ENGINEERS WHO KNOW WHAT THEY ARE DOING. IN OTHER WORDS GO AWAY AND DO NOT BOTHER US! Details are found at: http://www.azcentral.com/community/tempe/articles/2011/12/08/20111208tempe-police-launch-traffic-enforcement-campaign.html