My Least Favorite Intersection

So, you were cruising along a very well travelled stretch of a very well travelled bike path in a very bike friendly city and there, forcing you to break your stride and re-route was a gas guzzling car. I get it. Giving it a nice punch in the trunk with your fist seemed like the right thing to do.

Well, here’s what you didn’t know (and if trunk-punching wasn’t such a 1-way mode of communication, I would have been happy to share with you at the time) — I was setup.

1. Unfortunately, East->West on that heavily travelled bike path is basically blind when emerging from that parking lot.

2. West -> East has limited (but significantly better) visibility, BUT most of that bike traffic is actually stopping to cross the road right there. Causing the driver of the car to have to deduce the biker’s stopping/going intentions based on a complex system of deduction that is more instinct than anything

3. coming out of that parking lot, you never have the right-of-way to pull out into car traffic. 70% of the time, traffic has a green arrow to continue from John Nolen onto Williamson. 25% of the time, traffic has a green to move from Wilson to Williamson. 5% everyone has a red-light. This 5% is the magical time when there is any chance of getting out of the parking lot and onto Williamson in rush hour traffic.

4. there is always some degree of foot traffic moving in God knows what direction, at whatever speed comes to mind

5. did I mention it is completely dark at 5PM now?

So, unfortunately there are really 2 options:

A. Wait until until that magical moment that I mentioned in #3 above has finally come and gun it. If you are unlucky and someone was coming on the bike path (from behind the building, etc) — well, they are hit hard. Most likely that will only happen every 250x or so. Since I leave that lot about 250/yr and have worked there 2 years. I would only have 2 kills thus far. Not bad.

B. Inch out into the bike path BEFORE the magical moment. Since you aren’t worrying about car traffic (because you’ve conceded that you are only going to make it through the bike path and have zero chance of the road yet) you can concentrate on not killing bikers. Once the bike path is out of the equation (because you’re visible from both directions to bikers when you’re in the middle of the path) — you can now shift your attention to not killing car drivers by waiting for the magical seconds where there are no cars and go.

The obvious answer is B. The obvious side effect is that there is a pretty solid period (sometimes 15 seconds) where I am sitting right in the bike path making bikers angry, often to the point of yelling and occasionally to the point of car punching. Of course, some bikers have actually been in my shoes – leaving that parking lot via car… during rush hour… in the dark… they get it and give me a knowing look. Unfortunately, that’s like 40 people in the universe.

So, what’s the point of writing this up? Well, partly I’d appreciate it if you didn’t punch my car and/or flip me off (I have a fragile ego). Partly I want all of the thousands of cars/bikes/walkers moving through that intersection at rush hour every day to be just a little more cognizant of what’s really going on. And mostly, I just like barking at the sky.

but should you ever find yourself pulling out of that parking lot, here is a handy guide to the traffic patterns to keep an eye on.

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