The in basket: Last September, Ann Nardo wrote to say, “The left turn signal to the North Kitsap school bus barn will trip when there is no vehicle in the lane to turn left.
“It does not do it often but seems mostly in the afternoon has been my observance. With traffic increasing at this intersection, it can be a glitch in the flow of traffic.
“Not a big thing, but could help,” she said.
When I checked back with her in January to see if it was still doing the same thing, (it was, she said), she also put in a good word for the yellow flashing left turn signals she had seen at Kitsap County’s intersections in Silverdale. She called them “the best traffic organizational idea in years.”
The out basket: The signal is behaving as intended, says Jeff Collins of the city of Bremerton electronics shop, which maintains Poulsbo’s signals.
“The signal will only turn green in a direction when a vehicle is on a detector loop (in-pavement traffic detector) except in the main street direction, on which it should rest,” he said.
“The problem Ann is seeing is most probably caused by the south-to-east left turn vehicles driving over the detection loop for west-to-south,” he said.
Andrzej Kasiniak, Poulsbo city engineer, said he likes the yellow left turn signals too, and one such signal is coming.
“The new signal at the intersection of 10th Avenue and Lincoln will have a yellow blinking left turn arrow,” he said. Safeway will install the traffic signal this summer as remediation for its new store’s traffic impacts.
Other than that, budget cuts keep him from retrofitting any other city signals, which county employees tell him can be a $6,000 project per signal, he said.
