Dexter & Valley
I’m a little late to the punch here (been on vacation), but shortly before I left, I noticed that SDOT had restriped a short section of Dexter, just north of Valley Street (see the picture above). In a previous post, I had noted that the intersections of Dexter at Valley and Mercer, which have always been a mess, had tipped over into daily disaster areas for all road users during the afternoon rush hour, due to some combination of temporary and permanent traffic pattern changes arising from the Mercer East project.
In addition to “Do not block intersection” warning signs and cross-hatch paint on Dexter & Mercer, to discourage rampant box-blocking, SDOT’s Marybeth Turner described the rechannelization as follows:
Before the recent reconfiguration of lanes on Dexter Avenue North, vehicles turning from southbound Dexter to Eastbound Mercer often blocked other traffic on Dexter, including buses, bikes and cars. To alleviate this problem, we have now provided a second southbound lane on Dexter that allows buses, bikes and cars to pass the congestion waiting to turn left onto eastbound Mercer ST.
To provide room for the additional southbound lane, we relocated the existing northbound left turn pocket (to SR-99 North) and removed curbside parking from the east side of the street. We also removed the buffers for the bike lines on each side of the street.
How is the new channelization working for those of you who commute through this intersection? I haven’t seen any of the epic jams that were once commonplace on Dexter, but I may just have missed them, and 9th & Mercer still seems to be a bit of a mess. Yesterday afternoon’s commute would have been an extreme stress test, as an accident at Howell & Yale gridlocked South Lake Union. Bravo to SDOT for addressing this issue promptly — and doing so without throwing bicyclists under a bus.
Glad to see this happen. I live at Dexter and Aloha and I sent in a complaint to SDOT right after the original Dexter changes saying that bottle-necking to one lane at Valley was destroying all mobility on the street in the afternoons. I was worried about the bike lane though, seems like they did a good job of taking all factors into account in addressing the issue.
Thank you, SDOT!
The southbound Dexter situation is much improved, at least around 6pm. I haven’t been out around 4:30-5:30pm to see how it holds up during the worst traffic time.
I didn’t start using Dexter during the afternoon commute until pretty recently, but on a bike I certainly don’t enjoy navigating through the Mercer mess. They put up the signs not to block the box but people definitely still do. Maybe more people did before. On a bike northbound it’s possible to get around cars blocking the intersection, but creates an unsafe/unpleasant situation where you have to worry about the cars coming up behind you on your left who really want to get through the intersection and around the box-blockers.
What? You mean changing a street from 2 lanes in each direction to only one lane in each direction actually caused traffic congestion? I’m shocked!
A Handy Guide to in-City Car Counting:
sqrt(-1) Where the math on cars adds up.
0 Ears do not ring, eyes do not sting, lungs do not burn.
1 As seen on TV–open roads! sweeping views!
2+ Situation Normal: Congested.
So…the situation was FUBAR. We know it’s always been SNAFU–the question today would be is it now FUMTU or just SUSFU?
It wasn’t just South Lake Union that was gridlocked yesterday evening; the jam spilled over into the downtown core. I caught a 311 at 4th & University that took more than 20 minutes to get past the 4th & Pike stop and 50 minutes to reach the I-5 on-ramp on Olive. 50 minutes usually gets us most of the way to Brickyard P&R.
ST sent out an alert about the congestion to let commuters know that their routes may experience delays, though I had already made it home when the email arrived at 6:59pm.
Seeing all the ST buses backed up to King street and snaking down 4th was a sight to see on my way to the Sounders game.
There was some police activity at 9th and Howell at rush hour that was causing the northbound backup downtown.
“and removed curbside parking from the east side of the street”
Excellent. A few parking spots lost to provide better mobility seems like a reasonable sacrifice. I’ve not biked through here since the restriping but do recall that the bike lane gets a little wonky crossing Mercer while biking south on Dexter. Now, if we can just get some traffic enforcement. Jesse Jones on King 5 gives it a shot.
What a crock that response was from the cop in charge of traffic enforcement. They’re not using the old westbound lane in that block of Mercer, so it would be extremely easy to move the orange constructions barrels and create a ticketing shoulder on the north side of the street. Alternately, the traffic is always moving so slowly at rush hour that an officer could just walk beside the car and write the ticket in the time it takes the block to clear.
And if that won’t work, might I suggest this intersection as a prime candidate for a red light camera? Even a fake camera box with a few big signs would probably cut infractions by 90%.
Block-boxing is still rampant at Mercer/Dexter.
The proper response, for northbound Dexter vehicles (esp. buses) blocked on a green light by Mercer traffic stuck in the intersection, is to creep up to within 3 inches of the offending vehicle, and lay on your horn continuously until the vehicle moves. That 3 minutes of embarrassment should make an impression on the block-boxer.
Seriously, this is ridiculous nearly every day in the afternoon commute North. People constantly blocking the bike lane, right turn lane, and right most northbound general purpose lane. Sometimes even both northbound lanes. There should be police directing traffic every evening during the rush hour commute until the mercer project is completed.
It’s nice to see SDOT being so proactively on-the-ball lately (especially in contrast to some transit agencies I could name), at least when it comes to troubleshooting the projects the really care about.
Now if only we could get them to care about buses with the word “Rapid” on the side sitting for 4 minutes at Mercer and Elliott…
Now this is where they should have put a cycletrack!
Um…
Bruce, do you have a “before” picture (or a picture facing in the other direction)?
For the record, the hullabaloo at the Seattle Times is within this blog’s purview. They opposed Link and they tend to oppose many things transit advocates and urbanists support. What they’re doing doesn’t directly threaten such concerns now (aside from, you know, the general concern of having a local paper of integrity and decency), but the potential danger is glaring.
Whoopsie. This was obviously supposed to go in the current open thread. Please feel free to delete.
Thank you SDOT for your prompt attention to this matter. Nice to see an agency being so responsive to feedback.