BRT FAQ #006: The left turn situation
Because of the nature of the beast, many left turns off Broad will no longer be possible. Here’s why, how, and what it’ll look like.
It’s been all bikes all the time around the greater Richmond area for what seems like forever. Now that our streets are no longer clogged with pelotons, it’s time to get back to buses! Remember the BRT? If not, you can refresh your memory by reading the last five entries in this BRT FAQ series. Feel refreshed? Great, let us continue.
The thing that a BRT system has over its regular-type bus cousins, is the whole “rapid” part–it’s right there in the name! There are many, many things you can do to make your BRT even more rapid, but the easiest thing is to remove obstacles from its path. Those obstacles can take the form of stop lights, parked cars, pedestrians, and left-turning vehicles. Eliminate or ameliorate the effects of these things and you get a much more rapid BRT that can get you from here to there in less time.
To help rapidify our BRT, the Pulse, we are getting rid of a lot of left turns onto and off of Broad Street throughout the median-running section of the route. A ton of those random median cut-throughs that have, over time, become your special secret favorite left turn or U-turn spot will be sealed up. Some of the legal left turns at existing traffic signals will no longer be allowed, and a couple of new signals will be installed.
Where left turns are allowed, left turn lanes will be constructed and will eat up one of the parking lanes on Broad Street1. If your head’s swimming trying to picture turning left across two BRT lanes and two traffic lanes plus a parking lane, here’s how it’ll look:
And don’t worry, left turns will take place only at signaled intersections–that way you won’t have to worry about getting T-boned by a BRT coming at you from behind.
The net result of all these things you can see in this kind of confusing map:
So all of these left turns are going away, which does seems panic-inducing if you spend a large portion of your life driving around on Broad Streeet. But lest you think that the left turns have been snatched away with nary a thought as to how it will affect surrounding neighborhoods and businesses, I direct you to the back half of the GRTC’s Traffic Analysis Report (PDF). There you’ll find pages and pages of data about how frequently folks turn left at a given intersection. A quick example:
Left turns onto eastbound Broad from southbound Belvidere will be eliminated. At first, I thought, “Whoa that seems crazy, I turn left there all the time!” But apparently, I’m, like, the only one! Behold, traffic data:
- During the morning rush hour, only 96 vehicles made that left turn (compared to 120, 320, and 148 at the other lefts in that intersection).
- During the evening rush hour, only 91 vehicles made that left turn (compared to 186, 417, and 316 at the other lefts in that intersection).
That left turn, which I do use on the semi-regular, accounts for only 2% of the total traffic flow through that super busy intersection! So while I’ll need to find another way into town2, most folks will remain blissfully unaffected.
The left turn situation is definitely a big and not just exaggerated-due-to-grumpiness change. We’ll all need to alter how we think of Broad Street in the future–it may not be a great place to use as a conduit from some point As to some point Bs. Thankfully, the city is made up of many streets!
## More BRT FAQs
* [BRT FAQ #001: So what’s a BRT?](http://rvanews.com/news/brt-faq-001-so-whats-a-brt/127652)
* [BRT FAQ #002: Where will the BRT go?](http://rvanews.com/news/brt-faq-002-where-will-the-brt-go/127760)
* [BRT FAQ #003: What’s the timeline, and when did it all begin?](http://rvanews.com/news/brt-faq-003-whats-the-timeline-and-when-did-it-all-begin/127871)
* [BRT FAQ #004: The bus itself](http://rvanews.com/news/brt-faq-004-the-bus-itself/128035)
* [BRT FAQ #005: What’s this dang thing cost to build?](http://rvanews.com/news/brt-005-whats-this-dang-thing-cost-to-build/128806)
* [BRT FAQ #007: What does an outside expert think?](http://rvanews.com/news/brt-faq-007-what-does-an-outside-expert-think/130080)
* [BRT FAQ #008: What should I know before attending a public meeting?](http://rvanews.com/news/brt-faq-008-what-should-i-know-before-attending-a-public-meeting/130457)
* [BRT FAQ: Holiday status report](http://rvanews.com/news/brt-faq-holiday-status-report/131989)
* [BRT FAQ #009: Who even knows about the BRT?](http://rvanews.com/news/brt-faq-009-who-even-knows-about-the-brt/132368)
- This is just one of the BRT’s rock-and-hard-place trade offs. By adding more left turns to accommodate more car traffic on and around Broad Street, we’ve eliminated parking to accommodate more car traffic on and around Broad Street. ↩
- It looks like they’re planning to reroute traffic to Marshall Street. ↩
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Ross Catrow
Founder and publisher of RVANews.
Notice: Comments that are not conducive to an interesting and thoughtful conversation may be removed at the editor’s discretion.
96 vehicles? I too felt a rush of panic but I guess….maybe I will not panic!
Totally in support of the BRT…but to tout that 96 vehicles versus 120 is a significant difference is…eh…the #statsguy in me is hurting.
The issue that is not addressed here is a serious one. The hundreds of cars that will be denied dozens of left turns throughout the Fan and Museum District will pile up at the permitted handful of left turns along Broad. Congestion is inevitable, and for those who do not think it is a big deal, it is a quality of life matter for all people from all over the City who use Broad Street on a daily basis as it was intended- as the main avenue between East and West. It is a realistic fear for businesses that congestion will push their potential customers elsewhere for a less complicated commute. Broad Street is a well designed and financially resurging street with a well established bus route. It seems a shame not to protect it. The BRT may or may not add 500 riders onto the successful route that is there (Route 6), and it will cost $4 million dollars to maintain annually in a city with crumbling schools and many other serious serious issues. How will we pay for that moving forward? The potential gains simply do not add up to the long term costs. Much like the Redskins Training Camp, this project will cost more money than it is worth- way more money.
So if I’m reading your artical correctly, they plan to eliminate the left hand turn from S bound Belvider onto Broad but not the N bound turn from Belvider onto Broad. So my question is why? If one direction is turning isn’t it just as disruptive to the busses as both? Don’t you have to eliminate any left hand turns from that street entirely to make a lick of difference. I really hope I’m missing something.
I love how very time someone proposes a traffic pattern change in the city of Richmond, people come out of the woodwork to suggest it’s going to turn into the traffic equivalent of the “We’re out of coffee” scene from Airplane within the first 20 minutes. Some so-called transit advocates around Richmond remind me of the Arlington for Sensible Transit group that screamed loudly for “more sensible alternatives” to the Arlington streetcar, never actually offered said alternatives, then when the streetcar died, disappeared from sight.
I look forward to Richmond still arguing about transit and a baseball stadium in 2036.
Jay, you are understanding the description correctly. I was not involved in the decision making but looking at the designs I can make an educated decision as to why they are going to remove the southbound left turn to eastbound Broad Street. If you look closely at the design, the westbound Broad Street lanes have been shifted very far to the right. This changes how vehicles pass through the intersection and means that northbound traffic turning left through the intersection will pass through the intersection much further to the north than they do today. Because of that shift, if you tried to have vehicles from the southbound and northbound turning at the same time (as you do today) they would collide head on in the middle of the intersection. That’s obviously not a good thing. Therefore there are only two possible solutions to this issue. One is to change the traffic signal cycle and add a separate cycle where south bound thru traffic and south bound left turning traffic has a green and everyone else has red. Likely they analyzed this scenario and found that it caused far too much delay to the rest of the traffic going through the intersection (since that cycle would only serve about 2% of the intersection traffic). The only other solution then is to ban one of the left turn movements, which they chose to do given that it’s pretty easy to make the turn at Marshall Street and there is relatively little traffic making that movement at Broad and Belvidere. That option also has a positive benefit in that you can make the median larger for pedestrians to wait in if they can’t make the full crossing in one cycle. I hope that makes sense. This is much easier to explain when you can draw it out on paper rather than explaining in words.