District of Columbia

[davewiecking]

US 211, 240 and 240 ALT are on this old Gulf map of DC along with an unbuilt Washington Circumferential Route (Capital Beltway). No date on the map.

Amazing number of US-240's on the bottom map. Seems to go 4 different directions. Any chance you have the whole map? Would make it easier to figure out when it was printed.

[1995hoo]

From the Washington Post (may be paywalled): "The D.C. Council banned turning right on red citywide. It won't be enforced."

A law banning cars from turning right at all red lights across D.C. was set to start with the new year. But city transportation officials, who never supported the blanket ban, have pumped the brakes because the D.C. Council failed to earmark money to alert drivers to the change.

As it stands, the city will only enforce a ban at about half of the District's 1,600 intersections, where they have erected signs notifying drivers they can't turn right on red. Sharon Kershbaum, director of the D.C. Department of Transportation, said a citywide ban was impractical, given the number of people traversing the roads who might not be familiar with the law.

"Many of the cars on our roads are coming from Maryland, Virginia, where it's okay to turn right on red," Kershbaum said. "We don't think it's safe ... without signs to just assume that because it's law of the land that people are going to be aware and comply with it." She added that she thought any ad campaign would have "a real challenge getting to all possible drivers" and "doesn't add any more value than our approach, that we can do with our current budget."

I still think that rather than imposing a blanket ban that will be widely ignored, a more sensible approach (though certainly one that requires more administrative effort) would be to use targeted bans at high-volume intersections, especially those near Metrorail stops, and to consider the use of part-time bans. The latter would generally be similar to how across the river in Alexandria you sometimes see "No Turn on Red 7:00 AM to 7:00 PM" or "No Turn on Red When Pedestrians Are Present." In the former scenario, the effective times could be adjusted for locations where there are high pedestrian volumes at odd hours, such as around Verizon Center (though I think the 7th Street side would probably get a 24/7 restriction anyway). There are some locations that get high pedestrian volumes at certain times but otherwise see relatively low numbers—the area around Nationals Park immediately comes to mind as a place where offseason pedestrian volumes are fairly low along the South Capitol Street and Potomac Avenue sides of the ballpark. The same applies to Audi Field (probably more so, as it's not an area where most people have any reason to walk except to go to the stadium).

[Plutonic Panda]

I do agree that banning right turn on red is applicable in certain areas. But one thing that really frustrates me are having ridiculous laws on the books that aren't even enforced. If they're not going to enforce it, then they need to just repeal the entire law and then focus on specific intersections where a NRTOR makes sense and then enforce that. If you're gonna have laws that you're just gonna not enforce that shit's gonna lead people to disregard other laws as well in my opinion.

[mrsman]

If I'm reading the above correctly, it seems like DC wanted to impose a law that would simply ban turning on red in a manner similar to what is done in NYC.*  A ban of every intersection, regardless of whether a NTOR sign was present.

It seems like this approach has received some backlash, so they have decided to keep the law in place, but only enforce to the extent there are actually signs at any given intersection.

I don't like legal system GOTCHA.  If in all of the 50 states the law of the land generally permits making right turns on red, then that should be the case in DC as well.  If they insist on making NTOR the law of the land, at minimum, they should be required to put signs at every intersection, which would correlate with driver's expectations.

* NYC does put a NTOR law sign at every major city entrance (for most of the city, this will be one of the Hudson River water crossing, but it also exists on signage leaving the airports and on highways and major streets crossing the Bronx-Westchester county line or the Queens-Nassau county line).  I don't feel that it's sufficient, but in my travels to NYC, it seems that the law is well understood, even though there aren't NTOR signs at every signalized intersection.  (NYC was granted a specific waiver to the signage by the federal government.)

But despite the blanket restriction, there are several intersections where RTOR are permitted, by special signage.  They even occasionally have allowed left turn on red in the Broad Channel area.

[Rothman]

^Post gave me whiplash a couple of times.

If NYC can do it, so can DC.