Tim said “presumably cars turning in front of traffic from eastbound Williamson/Wilson or southbound Blair have the right of way over everyone else. You're right, there is no yield sign for eastbound bicyclists. There is some contention about that yield sign within the Traffic Engineering Division, with some advocating its removal. It isn't clear why cars turning into the Machinery Row complex should have priority over anyone.”
I don’t think cars (or bikes) turning from eastbound East Wilson/Williamson into Machinery Row do have the right of way there, Tim. The presumption is that cars (or bikes) crossing a sidewalk from the street have to yield to traffic (peds and bikes, presuming bikes are allowed on the sidewalk in question) along the sidewalk they’re crossing. And I don’t see how that’s not a sidewalk there. So, to summarize: Cars (and bikes) exiting Machinery Row face a stop sign. Cars (and bikes) entering Machinery Row from eastbound E Wilson/Williamson must yield to traffic on the sidewalk. So who exactly are westbound cyclists on the path (sidewalk) supposed to yield to? I would not be surprised that there’s some contention within Traffic Engineering about that Yield sign. I don’t see how it’s enforceable given the above. Nor do I see how a citation written for failure to yield to it would be defensible. I think what we can all agree on is that the intersection is still far from ideal. Moving the access to Machinery Row from that location to some other one would be an improvement, but if you actually created the access at Hancock, the plans I saw at SCTOD would have essentially eliminated Law Park between John Nolen and the Lake at John Nolen’s (proposed) intersection with Hancock. A much better solution in the long term would be eliminating almost all the conflicts, while simultaneously creating a HUGE amenity (for everyone): http://www.1kfriends.org/madison-create-millennium-park/ There was much discussion of the costs of that: http://www.1kfriends.org/downsides-decking-john-nolen-drive/ but also much discussion about the benefits: http://www.1kfriends.org/benefits-decking-john-nolen-drive/ Chuck Strawser Pedestrian & Bicycle Transportation Planner Commuter Solutions UW-Madison Transportation Services Visit our University Bicycle Resource Center at Helen C White: http://transportation.wisc.edu/transportation/bike_annex.aspx How are we doing? Take our customer satisfaction survey at https://www.surveymonkey.com/s/CommSol_CSSurvey From: Bikies [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of tim wong Sent: Thursday, August 27, 2015 1:14 AM To: Harald Kliems Cc: [email protected] Subject: Re: [Bikies] Machinery Row intersection The yield sign seems totally pointless. Since stop signs trump yield signs, bikes on the bike path would seem to have the right of way over cars exiting Machinery Row, but presumably cars turning in front of traffic from eastbound Williamson/Wilson or southbound Blair have the right of way over everyone else. You're right, there is no yield sign for eastbound bicyclists. There is some contention about that yield sign within the Traffic Engineering Division, with some advocating its removal. It isn't clear why cars turning into the Machinery Row complex should have priority over anyone. What this discussion points out once again is that the car road adjacent to the Machinery Row building needs to be closed, with access to that area, as proposed during the SCTOD discussions at an extension of Hancock St. Having almost been run over by a cellphone yakking idiot looking left (but not right, the direction from which I was coming) and seen another person almost run over as well, this intersection is a crash waiting to happen. The yield sign NEEDS to be removed, as it would make a bike hit by a car coming out of nowhere going into the Machinery Row exit at fault, which is simply absurd. On Wed, Aug 26, 2015 at 7:02 PM, Harald Kliems <[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>> wrote: Always a fun topic... Today somebodyon Reddit posted about a yield sign for cyclists at the intersection of the Machinery Row parking lot exit and the Cap City Trail. https://www.reddit.com/r/madisonwi/comments/3igzpy/cyclists_near_machinery_row_that_yield_sign_is/ A lot of people point out that they have never ever noticed that yield sign, and it appears (someone posted a link to Google Street View) that there is only one sign, for cyclists coming from Willy St. The parking lot exit has a stop sign, and there are no signs whatsoever on the trail for cyclists coming from Monona Terrace. I will readily admit that I have never noticed that yield sign either and have often been annoyed at drivers cutting me off when exiting the parking lot. Maybe it has been discussed here previously, but this seems like a horribly confusing and ambiguous intersection design that makes it nigh impossible to tell who has the right of way. Can anyone confirm that there is indeed only one yield sign? And any theories why it was put there/why there isn't one in the other direction? Harald. _______________________________________________ Bikies mailing list [email protected]<mailto:[email protected]> http://lists.danenet.org/listinfo.cgi/bikies-danenet.org -- "If we continue to consume the world until there's no more to consume, then there's going to come a day, sure as hell, when our children or their children or their children's children are going to look back on us--on you and me--and say to themselves, 'My God, what kind of monsters were these people?'" --Daniel Quinn
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