The in basket: Paula Crane, who commutes to Silverdale from Chico Way, proposes a major and a minor change in traffic control between Highway 3 and Byron Street in Silverdale.
She said he doesn’t expect the new roundabout being built midway along that stretch to help with the problems she sees, and proposes relocating the Byron Street traffic signal a block north to Carlton Street.
She said the routine backup from the light at Byron for traffic coming into town, “is caused by heavy traffic and the great frequency of the light on Byron being ‘set off’ so that it goes red for traffic on Silverdale Road. I have seen it ‘set off’ even by a car on Byron turning RIGHT onto Silverdale Way to go north. At times, just one car waiting to turn left onto Silverdale Way triggers the cycle and all the traffic on Silverdale Way has to wait.”
The traffic backup in the other direction also is exacerbated by the Byron signal, she said. “The traffic now starts to line up in the left lane all the way back at the Kitsap Mall Boulevard for folks who are going straight south out of Silverdale.”
Two collateral problems are rear-end accidents on northbound Silverdale Way because drivers don’t realize they are coming to an urban center and the Byron signal, and “sometimes cars entering from Byron, on their green light, don’t have enough space for all the waiting cars to enter Silverdale Way.”
She suggests that making Carlton Street the way in and out of Old Town Silverdale by moving the signal from Byron to there would have several benefits.
“There would be more room on Silverdale Way for cars to wait for the cycle (the road is four lanes there) and folks coming north would know they were in an urban area and have more time to react to stopped cars. There would be more room for cars coming from Old Town to get onto Silverdale Way on the left turn signal.”
In the short term, she proposed, “please get them to make the signal (at Byron) take longer to be triggered during rush hour. I think that there is some delay already but I don’t think it is enough.”
The out basket: Jeff Shea, Kitsap County traffic engineer, said, “Moving the signal to Carlton has its issues. First, it would be very expensive, and the limited storage gain for queuing traffic would be minimal. Also Carlton would have to be widened for a turn lane, which means taking private property.
“This intersection is less than 300 feet from the next signalized intersection (at Anderson Hill), which could result in conflicts between left turning vehicles at each intersection, and Munson Street would be right in the middle of the channelization for this signalized intersection.
“Ms. Crane’s concept of moving the signal to a location with more lanes is the reason we have a project in the county Transportation Improvement Program to add lanes to the Byron intersection. This project at Byron (it’s listed as No. 54 on the TIP, scheduled for 2016) extends the two lanes well south of the intersection and north to connect with the two existing lanes on Silverdale Way.
“We recognize the Byron intersection as a problem area,” Jeff said. “We have the signal timing set to give the main line, Silverdale Way, the majority of the green time. We have to give time to Byron at some point, but it is on an as-needed basis only, with limited green time. The right turning vehicles are on a 15-second delay before the light will go green. During congested times right turning vehicles can’t get out, so this triggers more frequently than other times.
“The county did a corridor study of that area last year because of the significant congestion it sees there,” Jeff said. “The recommended solution was a four-lane section of roadway from SR 3 to the five-lane section on Silverdale Way.
“The new roundabout is being built to address intersection capacity issues and not congestion. But, it should be noted that is being built so that it can be restriped in the future to accommodate two lanes of traffic. The two-lane configuration will not be striped until we have the added lanes from both directions.”
