Thursday, January 26, 2012

Letter Writer Says Drivers Need To Take Their Free Left Turn

Spokesman-Review Letter to the Editor
Ignorance Increases Traffic

As a driver who relies on steady movement on our downtown streets to provide expeditious travel in the city, I believe I have discovered the main causes for our never-improving congestion. It is not the people driving below the speed limit. You can in most cases pass them.

The drivers who fail to take advantage of free right turns against red lights hold up long strings of motorists that have to sit and wait until the light turns green. I have observed this so many times that it makes me wonder how they were able to secure a driver’s license without some basic knowledge of what their responsibility is to help avoid the congestion.

Most of these people are unaware that a left turn from a two-way street onto a one-way street against a red light is perfectly legal. I refrain from honking and gesturing as an attempt to educate these drivers to make good choices to help us keep the traffic moving, but some days my patience becomes very strained on what the best approach might be. Maybe some public service messages on television or radio would be a good beginning.

Ray Moss
Spokane

Well, that's a complaint I haven't heard before. Anyone else encountering this issue?

2 comments:

Charles said...

I guess he is in a big hurry, maybe he should have started a few minutes earlier. I don't drive a lot in areas with one way streets, so left turns on red are seldom encountered.

SRTC Staff said...

Most one-way streets are downtown and I haven't noticed much 'never improving congestion' there. There's a queu to get on the freeway every night but besides that not many backups downtown.


About SRTC

SRTC is the federally designated Metropolitan Planning Organization (MPO) for Spokane County. Urbanized areas with populations exceeding 50,000 people are required to have an MPO. SRTC was formed to address the county's transportation planning needs. It provides coordination in planning between the public, cities, small towns, the county, the state, transit providers, and tribes.

SRTC offers services including transportation monitoring, transportation modeling, census information analysis, travel demand forecasting, historical traffic count analysis, geographic information systems, and trip generation rates.