Traffic Inhibits Free Right Turn onto Ridgetop Blvd

The in basket: There’s a lot more to the conflict at the southbound off-ramp from Highway 303 to Ridgetop Boulevard in Silverdale than just people stopping before turning right when they don’t have to, reaction to the May 5 Road Warrior on that subject has made clear.
The proximity of Sid Uhinck Drive to the off-ramp complicates the matter considerably, four readers have said.

The in basket: There’s a lot more to the conflict at the southbound off-ramp from Highway 303 to Ridgetop Boulevard in Silverdale than just people stopping before turning right when they don’t have to, reaction to the May 5 Road Warrior on that subject has made clear.
The proximity of Sid Uhinck Drive to the off-ramp complicates the matter considerably, four readers have said.
Even before that column appeared, Gary Dahl had written wondering what the prospects are for a traffic signal at the off-ramp.
“Trying to turn left onto Ridgetop from the end of the exit ramp is nearly futile and often dangerous,” he wrote, “partly because the traffic lights from neighboring intersections don’t often create gaps in the traffic.  When gaps do occur, they are promptly filled by cars entering from Sid Uhinck Drive, many of whom have gotten there by turning right at the end of the ramp and making a U-turn on Sid Uhinck in order to avoid that nasty left turn!”
Three people wrote to offer a reason people are reluctant to make the free right turn there
Margo McKiernan who lives just off Sid Uhinck Drive, wrote “please remind drivers that some of us need to slow/stop and proceed across traffic to make an immediate left onto Uhinck Drive. I’m wondering when someone is going to rear-end me when I stop and ‘proceed with caution’ to get over to make the left turn.”
John Wilcox agreed, saying, “When we make that free turn we then have to go extremely slow or stop altogether and wait for traffic on our left to clear so that we can cross over that left lane to the turn lane for Sid Uhnick.”
And Dan Wages, who reported the same conflict, said it isn’t just people whose homes are accessed via Uhinck Drive. Some drivers use it as a cut-through to Bucklin Hill Road, he said.
The out basket: Whatever amount of relief a stop light there would offer, it is years away. Lisa Murdock of the Olympic Region of state highways says, “A traffic signal at the southbound off-ramp from SR 303 onto Ridgetop
Boulevard in Silverdale is not being considered for the ’07-’09 biennium because of the number of intersections with worse conditions (accidents
and volume) ahead of it. It is however, one of the intersections that
will be considered for the ’09-’11 biennium.”