Last week held the 3rd Crash Analysis Studio for a crash that tragically killed VCU student Mahrokh Khan.
Based on that analysis and comments I have taken a bit to illustrate the problems and propose how this intersection could be fixed.
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As you can see in the above video the most apparent problems is the turning lane which causes a lot of conflict points and in particular a major one right where pedestrians will be waiting to cross, which is where we believe Ms. Khan was hit and killed.
To fix this is simple...
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Looking at the areas that cars actually use, or should need to use, means that you have a large area which can be reclaimed for pedestrian sidewalks exclusively.
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These areas are where cars now turn through, going faster because of the large turn radii. But by adding bumpouts you can make these turn radii much more conducive to slower speeds. Laurel which is the N/S street is very low use, which doesn't really need a turn lane.
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This narrows the lanes of cars moving through and turning, and makes the crossing distance shorter, and also makes the pedestrians much more visible to drivers, drastically improving safety.
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Finally though, Main Street (E/W) is currently configured as a one way street, which acts as essentially an urban highway, encouraging speeding (over 70% of cars were driven over the 25mph limit here)
So changing this back to a 2 way street would further slow the cars.
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All of these changes are examples of what you can do to improve safety by simply shifting the premise that cars get precedent on the width of pavement, and reducing where cars travel to only what is necessary.
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Of course all of this requires a lot of capital to build new concrete, but this intersection shows that it could be done with simpler means until funds are available. In fact during recent construction it was reduced with barrels and there wasn't a traffic meltdown.
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I'd recommend Main and Cary become 2 way all the way and this would make making this block pedestrian only pretty easy.
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