The in basket: Some months ago, a reader told me she believed the timing of the traffic signals on Highway 305 through Poulsbo was to be reviewed at some point after completion of its widening project and the establishment of the HOV lanes.

The Poulsbo City Council has opted for fairly long red light wait times on the side streets to keep the through movements flowing.

I didn’t recall ever hearing of such a planned review of the signal timing, but did report back then that the unorthodox placing of the HOV lanes on the outside rather than against the center barrier was to be reviewed at some point – five years after they opened, as I recall.

The outside lane was chosen to be the HOV lanes to make it easier for transit buses to get to and from the roadside to pick up and discharge passengers.

I asked Andrzej L. Kasiniak, Poulsbo city engineer, what he recalled. And I asked Olympic Region officials for the state Department of Transportation if the HOV lane review had ever been done.

The out basket: Andrzej said he was unaware of a council pledge to review the signal timing at a particular time.

Steve Bennett, traffic operations engineer for the Olympic Region, replied, “While no formal study was done, we did look at the numbers and types of collisions that occurred within the limits of the HOV lane and the numbers and types of complaints we received about the lane, especially over the last five years.

“An informal before-and-after study showed a drop in collisions of about a third throughout the corridor. “Similarly, while there were a handful of complaints soon after the lane was constructed, there have been a very small number in the last five years.  From this, we feel the HOV lanes are working fine and plan no further study.”

The in basket: Two commenters on a past Road Warrior column, first names Kari and Robin, have made observations about changes at the 11th Street and Warren Avenue intersection, which has just undergone  a substantial renovation.

Keri wonders about what he thinks are longer waits for the signals to change to green and Robin noticed something I hadn’t, that the dedicated right-turn-only lane from westbound 11th to northbound Warren no longer exists

“I commute through this intersection daily during the week, eastbound,” Kari said. “It seems that the lights for north-south traffic stay green, even when there’s no traffic. Just last Monday, at about 6 a.m., I timed the lights as staying green for 30 seconds without a single car going through the intersection, either north- or southbound. It used to be that the lights would change much quicker when no traffic was detected.
“I’ve learned that if I don’t catch the left turn onto northbound Warren,” he said, ” but the light is still green to go straight, it is much faster for me to go through the light and turn on Park Avenue (even if I have to wait for the turn signal there, as the lights cycle faster) and then back to Warren at 17th, than it is to wait for the lights to cycle back to a green left turn.”

“Aren’t there traffic detectors on the light poles now? ” he asked.

Robin said he asked Chal Martin, city public works director, about removal of that turn lane, and “he told me it was to better line up the lanes.

“I went on the record as being unhappy about losing the right turn lane and mentioned that the lanes lined up fine for my last 50 years in Bremerton,” Robin said.

The out basket: Gunnar Fridriksson of the city of Bremerton street engineers had told me a couple of months ago that most of the movements at that intersection would operate on timer during its paving, which required destroying most of the in-pavement wire detectors, called “loops.” Keri’s complaint sounded to me like a residue of that.

But no, Gunnar says,  “The signal there was never put on a time setting, we went directly from using the in-ground loops to the radar detection.

“There have been two changes here with the signal coordination package that we are currently working to adjust,” Gunnar said, “timing and coordination with the new signal on Warren at 13^th Street and tying in coordination with the signals at Burwell and Sixth Street to the rest of the corridor.

“Our eventual goal will be to have the signals from Burwell all the way up to Riddell Road (synchronized),” he said. “We do have adjustments to make and that will be continuing for the next several weeks, as the (electronics) shop schedules this work in with regular maintenance, emergency call-outs, etc.”

And yes, the new radar traffic detectors are mounted on the poles at the 11th and Warren intersection.

As for the missing right turn lane, he said, it was deleted “to provide a five-foot shoulder area. This will make it easier for buses and trucks to turn northbound onto Warren, along with helping line the lanes up a little better through the intersection.

“If you get a chance to go out and take a look, you will see quite a few tire marks going across the new ADA ramps (for the disabled) and sidewalk at this corner.  It is a fairly tight corner and a tough one to make for larger vehicles with the lane adjacent to the sidewalk.”

Gunnar also noted that the most recent traffic counts done for 11th Street’s three westbound lanes, while dated, showed that of the 5,700 vehicles counted, only 1,800 turned right.

The red light enforcement camera watching westbound traffic is still there and functioning as before, he said.

The in basket: Glenn Hostetter called to say he saw a puzzling thing coming out of Bremerton on Highway 304 on Monday. April 15. The line of cars he was in was met by a state Department of Transportation truck that pulled out in front of them just as they reached the merge with southbound Highway 3 traffic.

A second WSDOT truck did the same thing with the Highway 3 traffic. A car positioned itself between the two trucks as the caravan crawled toward Gorst at about 5 miles per hour. One of the trucks had an electronic sign on the back saying it was a rolling slow down.

When they got almost to Gorst, the car pulled to the side and the two trucks sped up and continued on their way.

Traffic in the other directions was proceeding normally.

What was it all about? he asked.

The out basket: Duke Stryker, head of the state maintenance crews here, said the slowdown kept traffic away from another state crew that was removing some debris from the roadway up ahead. He didn’t say what it was, but it clearly wasn’t big enough to require closure of a lane of the highway, with all the attendant signs and warnings, or small enough a state trooper could throw it onto the shoulder.

Rolling slow downs occur from time to time, but the only one I’ve ever witnessed personally involved a state patrol car weaving back and forth at slow speed across all the lanes of southbound Highway 3 as it approached Highway 304. I think that one involved a complicated traffic stop on the shoulder.

The in basket: I’ve written a couple of times about the February conference I attended over at Sea-Tac at which vendors of the latest in high-tech traffic control got to show off their wares.

Today I’ll mine a couple more bits if information I found interesting.

Have you even driven through a construction zone marked by mile after mile of orange barrels on the shoulder? Often, when I encounter such a stretch, I find myself wondering what one of those barrels costs?

So I asked Todd Wilson of Traffic Safety Supply Co., who had a booth at the conference. His answer: $80 each, mostly due to the reflective tape that makes then visible at night. That tape is pretty pricey, he said. I also visited an online site that said the barrels aren’t just thrown together, but must meet federal standards that keep them from penetrating a vehicle in a high speed collision.

So next time you find yourself passing dozens or hundreds of those barrels at a work zone, have a passenger count them and multiply by $80. And that doesn’t even count the cost of setting them out. Usually, they belong to the contractor chosen to do the job.

Todd gave me another figure while we talked – $16,500. That’s the price of one of the new-generation impact attenuators that are installed on the end of concrete abutments to absorb the impact of a car hitting one, he said.

That’s what his company was paid for one that replaced an older one at the start of the ramp that carries northbound traffic on Highway 3 over the Gorst business district on its way to Bremerton after a vehicle hit it at high speed last summer. Todd had been told it was a suspected suicide attempt, but I couldn’t confirm that. The driver was badly hurt but survived, he said. The impact was nearly double the 45-mph design capacity of the old attenuator, which had to be scrapped.

The one his company sold the state won’t require that, he said. It is designed to be pulled back into shape after its hit to guard occupants of the next car that crashes into it.

The in basket: As I drove down 11th Street eastbound toward Warren Avenue the other day, I noticed a boxed area created by yellow stripes across Warren, westbound, where a left turn pocket would be. Left turns have been prohibited there for as long as I can remember.

I wondered if they will be allowed when the new widened intersection is fully opened.

As my wife and I sat at the eastbound red light, we discussed the four signal heads controlling the three lanes, two lanes for for left turns and the other two for straight ahead movements in the one lane dedicated to that, historically.

I recently wrote in this column that the extra signal head complies with federal regulations that the main movement at a signalized intersection have two signals for redundancy if one burns out or is blocked by a large vehicle.

But when the lights turned green that day, one of the two in the center showed an arrow to the left and the other an arrow pointing straight ahead. It seemed like a likely source of confusion for a newcomer to the intersection as to what is permitted from the inner left turn lane.

The out basket: First, says Gunnar Fridriksson of the city traffic engineers, no left turn is being created on westbound 11th to go south on Warren.

The striped box “was just an attempt to outline the hatched area that was here

previously.”

The only change in permitted movement at the completed intersection will be that only the outside southbound lane on Warren will allow right turns. Previously, both outside southbound lanes allowed right turns, though I hardly ever saw anyone use the innermost of those lanes for a right turn.

Gunnar said I am not the first to ask about possible confusion about the four signal heads, and even sent along an inquiry about it from Bruce Hall, originally sent to his city councilman, Greg Wheeler.

Gunnar’s answer is as I had described, “The federal guidance we are required to follow for designing a signal

system has the through lane (single eastbound traffic on 11th Street)

with two sets of lights, and a single set of lights for the two turn

lanes.  So there are four sets of lights for the three lanes.”

It’s a puzzling issue to arise now, Gunnar said, since the same four-signal display for three lanes was there before the intersection was redone, but hanging from wires instead of the new metal poles and cross arms.