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A new policy is the start of eliminating dangerous “right on red” intersections in Seattle.
The Urbanist reports the Seattle Department of Transportation rolled out a new policy in March calling for street projects replacing or modifying a traffic signal to default to no-right-on-red signage.
“The change doesn’t mean that right-on-red will be restricted every single intersection in Seattle anytime soon, but rather that every time a project within the department deals with replacing or modifying a traffic signal, SDOT will have to find a reason justifying not to add ‘no turn on red’ signage,” the Urbanist reports.
The SDOT memo on the change cites a study published in the journal of the Institute of Traffic Engineers that found “driver-to-driver conflicts were reduced by 97%, and vehicle-pedestrian conflicts were reduced by 92% following the installation of consistent no-turn-on-red (NTOR) signage,” according to the Urbanist report.
The Seattle Times reports the city “has already begun upping the number of intersections where right turns are barred” noting new restrictive signage at 28 downtown intersections, with 13 more to be installed by the end of June.
Right on red wasn’t always legal but became the norm in western states by the 1950s and spread across the country by the 1970s with the automobile industry touting potential gas-saving benefits. Efforts to restrict the maneuver in Washington state have mostly stalled.
Enforcement, meanwhile, will mostly be left to insurers and accident investigators. Traffic tickets issued by Seattle Police have dropped massively from pre-pandemic levels with tallies down from between 70% and 90% depending on how you count it.
The Seattle change joins other systemic approaches to try to make Seattle’s streets safer including efforts to limit intersections where left-hand turns are allowed, a change that can be seen up and down Broadway in changes made in conjunction with the opening of Capitol Hill Station.
Meanwhile, with more solid separation coming along with the planned bike lane and pedestrian improvements as Pike and Pine are shifted to one-way streets below Bellevue, Broadway’s much-maligned plastic posts along the street’s “bikeway” have been replaced in sections with cement separators in recent work by SDOT.
I rode through this today! Thank you @musingsofmonica for being the first on my feed to alert me to this new thing in Capitol Hill! 😄 pic.twitter.com/0mZNxjQSXA
— saltyseattlecyclist (@seattlesaltiest) May 2, 2023
CHS reported here on Department of Transportation head Greg Spotts’s plan for overhauling Seattle’s approach to street safety to better incorporate so-called “Vision Zero” concepts into every project and to implement a “safe systems” model with roads designed to be “self-enforcing.”
According to the city, people walking and biking are involved in 7% of the traffic collisions in Seattle and account for 66% of the traffic fatalities. Seattle’s Vision Zero program was launched in 2015 with a goal to end serious injuries and fatalities citywide by 2030.
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Good
They should just get it over with and make it city wide… then they wouldn’t have to waste all the time, energy and money putting up signs that people will just ignore anyway…
Right on red was a Carter/energy crisis era thing… It was mean to allow people to not sit idling at timer activated lights in low traffic areas – it was NOT meant to allow people to obsessively stare left looking for a tiny break in traffic so that they can race out… It was NOT meant to allow people to plow through red lights without even bothering to stop…
Where I grew up it was always no right on red within the city limits, unless the intersection was specifically signed that it was OK.. it was simply not a problem. These days with sensor lights and many cars that don’t idle at lights it’s really, really not a problem.
To make a proper right on red 1) You need to come to a complete stop. 2) You need to check for other traffic and pedestrians – if there is anyone in or even approaching the intersection – you just need to wait…
Sometimes as a pedestrian I feel like I could use an airhorn.. People who are so intent on making a right on red, they are so caught up looking for an opportunity to go they don’t bother or remember that they need to look to their right… Really if you cannot make that right easily and comfortably, if you don’t have time to look both directions or need to gun it to get into the gap you shouldn’t be doing it…
Sounds like when you grew up, there weren’t many cars on the road.
And when you grew up… I am sure people didn’t have smart phones, why don’t you propose to take them away and assume there wouldn’t be any impact to the way people live.
Yeah, cause right on red is really like a cell phone… And I grew up in a real city with city traffic.
And if you run over or even almost run over a pedestrian as you make a right on red, whether or not they were paying attention is moot.. The light is “WALK” and they should be able to step out into that intersection without paying any attention to you at all because you shouldn’t be moving if there is any traffic – vehicle or pedestrian even approaching the intersection… you should be stopped and stay stopped.
By the time SDOT gets around to placing all these red light turn restriction signs, likely twenty years to complete, sentiment will have changed and they’ll spend twenty more years taking all the signs down.
Hopefully they put the green right turn arrows in then too as a counterbalance
Who launched nonsense program like Vision Zero? The single narrow focus inevitably introduces trade-offs and inefficiencies.
I guess fixing the billion-dollar backlog due for Seattle’s roads, or actually building a pleasant public transportation is too hard… so we have to invent some nonsense project to singularly focus on (and not solving actual, much bigger problems).
Transportation engineers. Guarenteed employment.
The single narrow focus of ending traffic deaths? And by inefficiencies, slower car-flow to avoid hitting/killing people? Not nonsense for some