Board of Aldermen 03-08-2022 Page 18
Alderman Comeau
Thank you Madam President. | was actually going to ask the same question. It seemed like a lot of conversations were
centered around the people making the U-turns. In general, | favor things that are less restrictive. | feel like the more we
keep the cars moving, the less they’ll be backing up somewhere else. | know it’s been said that the traffic isn’t necessarily
the people leaving the gas station, but the fact is there is significant increase because of that. So it’s just increasing the
number of cars in the area in general and people making a right turn in the face of somebody making a U-turn are already
doing the wrong thing because you’re supposed to be waiting until there is an opening. I’m not sure if we further restrict
that if people who are already doing the wrong thing aren’t just continue doing a different wrong thing, but it will also slow
down some people who may have the opportunity to go and now won't be able to if they do follow the instructions of the
signage when it might have been perfectly clear to make their turn and now they're not going to and that is going to back
up everyone else who’s trying to get out of that roadway.
My thought as far as getting rid of the U-turn was that the next light is only a couple hundred feet up. | know it is also a
busy intersection because it’s Spit Brook Road, but the timing of those lights offers a green arrow for U-turns specifically.
The north bound and south bound lanes have the simultaneous lefts. So that flows pretty well. In my experience, | don’t
know what impact this would have on that but it seems that if our concerns are largely centered around the U-turns and
not the right turns, then maybe we should be looking to restrict that instead.
Alderman Dowd
Yes. | just want to ask the question having been familiar with infrastructure changes in Ward 2. What type of
infrastructure studies would you need to make this happen - signage and is that going to be in place before we are making
other changes to that intersection or taking advantage of the traffic study to find out what the ultimate solutions are? | will
tell you that | think that U-turn to go north is dangerous. So either you shouldn’t be able to take the U-turn when people
are taking a right which would say “no right turn on red”, so I'd be in favor of what we’re asking right now but how long
would it take to implement that?
Dan Hudson, City Engineer
I’m not sure if | fully understood the question. | will tell you what has been looked at is the lengthening the southbound left
turn. That’s something we know is not quite enough storage and that was looked at as part of the Costco study and that
change is planned to be made by Costco.
The right turn on red, as | said, | don’t foresee significant backups as far as safety issue. | don’t think it’s going to
significantly change things, but it is going to reinforce the fact that we don’t believe it’s safe to make that maneuver with
the U-turns. When the Costco development is constructed, that will connect through some of the other ways to come and
go. That may help. Those are the kinds of changes we talked about. Also Costco as part of their offsite development,
they plan to lengthen the turn lanes and it may | believe even change the configuration where you would have a left
through lane and a right turn only lane which would improve some things there because you could maybe have a right
turn signalized overlap with another move. There are some things in the works. Nothing immediate. For this change if it
was approved, it would be simply putting up no right turn on red sign at the signal on Adventure Way.
Alderman Cathey
To Alderman Thibeault’s point, DPW did contact me and said that Thibeault would support the legislation if | did not. My
first question was | need a traffic study. I’m not going to do anything without data. That doesn’t make any sense.
Secondly, the right on red still doesn’t make sense because the majority of people who are going northbound know that
you can leave Bu’s going northbound at that one exit. There is a very low probability that people who are going to loop
back around Bu’s back down, which you can do, and then go back up to make the right on red. It’s not expedient. It
doesn’t make sense. So the majority of the traffic is SkyVenture, CVS (which already has a very, very compacted parking
lot). | do not take my Ford F150 in there because it’s very difficult to get out. The same thing with Best Buy if you want to
go back down around or go into the garage or whatever. So in my opinion, a majority of the traffic is businesses that are
not related to BJ’s and they will be prohibited especially when the shopping season comes up and then even more so
when Costco gets built and gets connected. | think the back-ups are going to get worse and | think the right on red (there
has been no accidents reported | don’t think at that U-turn for right on red U-turn) so maybe it has been dangerous
anecdotally but there hasn’t been an uptick in accidents, so | don’t think that it’s necessarily a problem that hasn’t already
existed and | don’t think this solves the problem either.
