The two-adjacent signals causing extra traffic is something I encounter daily in Berkeley -- Ashby / Claremont & Ashby / Domingo. I probably blow an average of 5 minutes a day cause of that double intersection.
To highlight one other point from the video: You want a light to be able to clear the line built up each time. If not, flux in > flux out and that's a recipe for a growing line, which causes a traffic jam.
They are very common all down the SF Peninsula because of the Caltrain tracks. There's California/Carolan all through Burlingame (which has some of the most dangerous train crossings in the country because you can get stuck on the tracks between the lights), and then it follows El Camino on one side while the other one goes from Delaware (San Mateo) to Old County (San Mateo / Belmont / San Carlos) to Alma (Palo Alto) to Central Expressway (Mountain View / Sunnyvale).
The Old County lights at least are staggered so they are almost always green at the same time. The Central Expressway ones, not so much - there've been times I've been stuck for 20 minutes trying to cross the 100 feet from Moffett to Castro in Mountain View, because the light timing never lined up with the train signals.
> there've been times I've been stuck for 20 minutes trying to cross the 100 feet from Moffett to Castro in Mountain View, because the light timing never lined up with the train signals.
They've conveniently solved this by closing the Moffett->Castro side of that intersection entirely. You can still go Castro->Moffett, but they're planning on closing that to eliminate the grade crossing entirely.
Oh, nice. So all traffic is routed over Shoreline and then enters downtown through Villa/Dana? That's a better road for it anyway, with the grade-separated Caltrain & Central Expressway crossings.
Is there still pedestrian access from the northeast side of the Caltrain? I used to live in the Moffett/Middlefield area and being able to walk to downtown was a big draw for that.
> So all traffic is routed over Shoreline and then enters downtown through Villa/Dana?
Yeah, they're planning to put a ramp from the Shoreline bridge over the tracks down to Evelyn to spread out the traffic, but right now people take Villa.
> Is there still pedestrian access from the northeast side of the Caltrain?
Yeah, all the crosswalks are still operational. The long term plan is to put a bike/ped tunnel under Central and to completely close off the Castro/Caltrain side.
efavdb · · focus · HN ↗
To highlight one other point from the video: You want a light to be able to clear the line built up each time. If not, flux in > flux out and that's a recipe for a growing line, which causes a traffic jam.
nostrademons · · focus · HN ↗
The Old County lights at least are staggered so they are almost always green at the same time. The Central Expressway ones, not so much - there've been times I've been stuck for 20 minutes trying to cross the 100 feet from Moffett to Castro in Mountain View, because the light timing never lined up with the train signals.
kijiki · · focus · HN ↗
They've conveniently solved this by closing the Moffett->Castro side of that intersection entirely. You can still go Castro->Moffett, but they're planning on closing that to eliminate the grade crossing entirely.
nostrademons · · focus · HN ↗
Is there still pedestrian access from the northeast side of the Caltrain? I used to live in the Moffett/Middlefield area and being able to walk to downtown was a big draw for that.
kijiki · · focus · HN ↗
Yeah, they're planning to put a ramp from the Shoreline bridge over the tracks down to Evelyn to spread out the traffic, but right now people take Villa.
> Is there still pedestrian access from the northeast side of the Caltrain?
Yeah, all the crosswalks are still operational. The long term plan is to put a bike/ped tunnel under Central and to completely close off the Castro/Caltrain side.