Roundabout on Laburnum gains traction
WTVR Channel 6 reported this week that efforts to remove the stoplights at the intersection of Laburnum and Hermitage avenues — replacing them with a traffic roundabout — is moving forward. The article notes that the proposed traffic change will need approval from a number of boards before it is adopted:
Driving around Richmond is a headache anywhere you go, but one intersection on the Northside is a real nightmare. Hermitage at Laburnum Avenue is a traffic jam just about anytime of the day. The reason? The A.P. Hill statue sits right in the middle, making it difficult to turn in any direction.
The City says 30,000 vehicles travel through the intersection everyday. There’s been an accident there every few weeks, and even some fatalities as well. Now Richmond traffic engineers have a plan to turn this intersection around. They’re considering removing these lights and making Hermitage and Laburnum a true roundabout.
Engineer Tom Flynn says the roundabout would force drivers to slow down to just over 20 miles-per-hour by expanding the circle with landscaping, building curved medians and posting yeild signs at each corner.
Given that construction materials have become dramatically advanced in the last fifty years, there is no logic to having overpasses constructed out of heavy steel and concrete.
Now would be a good time for Virginia Tech, ODU, UVA and VCU’s Engineering Schools to have a design competition for lightweight, modular designs for overpasses, so that we can do away with stop lights altogether.
I want to wipe out stop lights in your lifetime.
Something that our elected representatives could do right away with the stroke of a pen would be to set most non-major intersections to flash yellow on the major roads, with red on the cross streets during off-peak times, such as after 7:00 PM week nights and on Saturdays and Sundays. These same public officials who are always saying how much they help us, could also work in concert with other counties and VDOT to eliminate more of those prohibitions for Right Turn on Red, and add time constraints to those that remain, so that off-peak right turns and u-turns are permitted in most locations where they are prohibited during peak hours.
If any of you readers have good ideas to save fuel and commute times, post them here AND take the time to write an email to your County Supervisor or Councilman.
The current crop of legislators in our Assembly think that “Hot Lanes” and more tolls are the answer. All those two dumb moves will do is provide rich people a way to avoid the traffic, while making things worse for the working people. Tell your Delegate that “Hot Lanes” and tolls will mean their political death. We all benefit from our roads, let us get VDOT the resources they need to develop state-wide, comprehensive solutions, and just say NO, to tolls.