Variant 3: bigger island on Cerrillos

plan3 Suppose the 'middle lane problems' are addressed by lengthening the island as shown in the drawing to the right.
Now traffic from the E will take the Gilmore entrance. Traffic from the W will take the main entrance. Traffic exiting the main entrance will have to make a right turn to the E.
Note that Whole Foods has implied that their target market is the affluent neighborhoods to the North. Since S-bound traffic on St.Francis cannot turn left onto Cerrillos, they will make a left on Paseo, turn S onto Guadelupe an right again onto Cerrillos. This means that the Gilmore entrance will de facto become the busiest entrance to the site. Traffic exiting the site whose target is St.Francis N-bound will not use the Cerrillos exit, since they cannot turn left from there. Instead they will use the Gilmore entrance, and attempt to make the left turn onto Cerrillos. Here there is contention with the incoming traffic. The left-turn traffic will back up onto Gilmore, making it hard for Gilmore residents to exit their street.
If you look closely at the plan at the top of the page, you can see that there is a small traffic island in the middle of the Gilmore entrance. If you look even closer, you can see that this island is curved, in an attempt to prevent exiting traffic from making a left turn onto Gilmore and then right onto Topeka. As cars are backed up onto Gilmore as they try to make a left turn onto Cerrillos, it becomes increasingly unlikely that this little island will prevent people from turning left onto Gilmore,and it is likely that a good fraction of the exiting traffic will filter through the small neighborhood streets, for example in an attempt to make a left from Early Street onto Cerrillos. This is a particularly difficult turn, as can be seen from the accident counts on this map. With the Gilmore exit backed up, cars will exit from the Cerrillos entrance, be forced E, and a fraction of them will attempt to cross all lanes and make a U-turn in front of McDonald's, which should cause more excitement.




Last update: 5 Sep 98.
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