u/WoodyForestt

I guess this is a "painted" merge taper. The 24 ft wide area of pavement to the right of the median really doesn't narrow until very close to the intersection. It actually gives the appearance of curving outward. The median tip is 160 feet from the intersection.

Basically, many vehicles just follow the curb/road until it forces them to merge very late. People just use the dropping lane as a "right lane" as long as they can, to go straight through the intersection or to turn right. They treat the little white dots as white dashes signifying a right lane.

There are a lot of conflicts near the intersection where the road forces the folks who don't want to merge (especially right turners) to do so.

Also, I made a post before that there is a large apartment complex on the other side of the median with right in right out driveways. People also use the inviting drop lane to do sweeping U-turns from the right lane. Even if there is traffic in the left lane.

The intersection ahead is currently a "T" junction. You can't turn left. The developer wants to extend that road to allow left turns into a new residential section without a left turn lane.

I'm concerned that having cars staging left turns is a bad idea.

It's a collector road marked at 25 mph as a vestige from before the road was extended, but the other side of the road is 35 mph and the county knows drivers go 35+ here.

I live an "award winning" master planned community in Texas that's connected to a commercial center at the "front" of the community.

I'm a frequent pedestrian and I've become interested in pedestrian safety.

I just started educating myself about the nuances of pedestrian crossings and signs this week.

Walking and driving around these days, I've taken note of the dozens of pedestrian crossings. It's as if no two crossings are alike. Options include:

1. Many pedestrian diamonds signs at crosswalks with no downward marker or "ahead" marker. This one also has R1-6 post on signpost saying stop for pedestrian in crosswalk. Others don't.

2. Pedestrian diamond sign but with school crossing figures, nowhere near a school, and with R1-6 sign on the signpost. 60 feet before the crossing, no AHEAD sign or down arrow.

3. Signs telling pedestrian on sidewalk to stop when crossing vehicular driveway, instead of telling driver to stop before driving over sidewalk as required by Texas law

4. Unmarked crosswalk with pedestrian median cut across divided collector road but no curb ramp to get there on east side of intersection, while west side of intersection has ladder crosswalk.

It goes on, all through the community. Maybe the crosswalk is painted, maybe not, maybe there's a sign, maybe not, maybe it's school crossing figures on a diamond, maybe a downward arrow, maybe R1-6 plaques etc.

It's a "box of chocolates" approach to marking each pedestrian crossing.

And no, I don't think someone used "engineering judgment" for each of these various pedestrian treatments, like "the road demands X here and demands Y there." I think they just told a contractor "we need a pedestrian crossing" and each time the contractor grabbed what was in the back of the truck and did it his own way.

Is this all par for the course in the world of traffic signals? I could write a long letter to the county but I don't know that they would care or find it problematic.

A divided four lane collector road was constructed into our master planned community 5+ years ago alongside the commercial center at the front of our community.

When the road was built there was just a commercial center on the right (south) side that vehicles could access after turning in off an arterial road. The left side was woods. So they only put cuts in the median to line up with the streets entering the commercial center on the right.

Two years ago, the developers built a 334 unit apartment complex on the left. All resident parking is behind its gates. There are three driveways into this complex. Driveway 1 leads to hundreds of resident parking spaces. Driveway 2 leads to the "main office entrance," which accommodates only a dozen quarantined visitor parking spaces in front of the office. Driveway 3 leads to hundreds more resident parking spaces.

Only driveway 2 lines up with a cross street intersection, providing left turn access in and out. Driveways 1 and 3 are stranded behind the median, no one can turn left in or out of them, you can only turn right in and out.

See Google street view

See apartment complex parking and access layout

Virtually every single resident of this complex returns home by turning east off the arterial onto this road, drives past driveway 1 and/or driveway 3, and slows to a near stop to pull a tight U-turn from the left lane of traffic around a shallow median to circle back to driveway 1 or 3 and turn right in.

They pull hundreds of U turns a day, on a road with no deceleration pockets or turn lanes. The U turns just past the end of the median beyond driveway 3 are undoubtedly illegal, as they are across a double yellow line, at the exact point where roads signs are telling everyone "right lane ends, merge left."

Is this remotely normal, or is it insane road design, and is there anything residents can do about it now other than complain and moan online? It's already been approved of course. It's also more of an "accident waiting to happen" thing than a "we have accidents all day and all night here" thing.

Thanks

I'm talking about this: https://maps.app.goo.gl/WFMxPabZYyuasABY9

Dashed white lines as you approach the intersection and then they disappear even though the road stays about the same width. So cars start drifting lanes through the intersection and then on the unmarked block, half the cars keep the lane discipline and half the cars straddle the middle and treat it as one lane in each direction, until it's marked with white dashes again a couple hundred yards further up.

It's kind of the same thing on the other side of the road for cars in the opposite direction, the dashed white lines come and go. Is there an engineering reason for this?

This is in Texas. I'm wondering it the signs should be in front of the intersections in relation to approach traffic, not after the intersections.

Also, since they are generally at the intersections, are downward diagonal arrows mandated?