[SDCBC] What were they thinking?

[John Eldon]

It would certainly be nice if local authorities could reclaim road design back from CarTrance at freeway onramps and offramps, which are consistently the greatest road design hazards we face as bicyclists and pedestrians. CarTrance is still stuck back in the 1960s "move as many cars as fast as possible, all other road users be damned" time warp, and their stated desire to run the bike lane up the right side of the right turn lane is only one of many examples of this.

Why oh why do they have to emphasize pumping cars into the mouths of freeway onramps, at our peril, only to hold them up with those stupid ramp meter signals at the end of the ramp, where it finally merges onto the freeway? An onramp is supposed to be an acceleration lane, and those of us who drive environmentally responsible underpowered cars need all the help we can get merging onto a freeway. Calm and control (or meter) the traffic at the mouth of the ramp (e.g. southbound I-5 from Roselle St. in Sorrento Valley), and you do not need to meter the top of the ramp at all -- a much better solution for everyone concerned.

Kathy Keehan <execdir at sdcbc.org> wrote: Hi Tom,
I'm not sure about the inclusion of the two right turn only lanes, but I
expect it might happen - they're doing a lot of work in the median right
now. But it might just be that they accidentally used the same signs as for
the eastbound Camino Del Norte interchange, where there are two right turn
only lanes.:-)
There was considerable debate with Caltrans about the configuration of the
street up to the interchange. We pushed hard for that bike lane to be long
so that bicyclists wouldn't be trapped to the right of the right turning
motorists. They didn't want to stripe the bike lane at all, and if they did
they wanted to keep it to the right all the way up to the signal. I think
this is better, although not ideal. I'm not exactly sure what 'ideal' would
be on this six lane 50 mph arterial, though. 
Kathy

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