Scooter Driver Sitting At Intersections

THAT MEAN MOTOR SCOOTER WON’T TRIP THE SIGNAL: Ralph Clark writes vie email that “I ride a motor scooter and am a bit frustrated with some of the traffic signals that are supposed to respond to vehicle sensors in the pavement.”

Ralph says “some signals will recognize the scooter and change the traffic signal within a reasonable time, and some will not.”

For example, when Ralph is in his vehicle and stops on the stop bar, where the signal loop that detects traffic is embedded, “a typical long wait is two minutes.”

On his scooter, at the same intersection, “I’ve sat there for up to eight minutes … without the signal changing. This even happens when occasional cars arrive in the right lane and turn right on red after stopping, although the signal will change if several cars get backed up in the right lane. (Truchas and Academy) is not the only intersection where this occurs, and I’ve observed it seems to happen to some motorcycles, too.

“Seems my options are: 1.) Wait a reasonable time and then run the red light, which is what I often end up doing. 2.) Park the scooter in the traffic lane, walk across the other lanes and use the pedestrian button to get the signal to change while hoping that neither the scooter or I get run over by a car, or 3.) Be prepared to wait and wait and wait until a car finally arrives behind me that will trigger the signal change.”

Ralph has “been wondering how sympathetic a police officer or a judge will be when I’m caught either running the light or parking in the middle of the street to wander over to the pedestrian button and back.”

I’m betting not very. And the laws of physics are not in his scooter’s or body’s favor should a car or truck come by.

Ralph’s quandary leads us to an interesting back-and-forth primer on the different methods used to tell signals that traffic is waiting.

David Mitchell, Bernalillo County’s director of Operations and Maintenance, poses the question that this could be “one of the selling points of the detector cameras vs. the inductive loops?”

In other words, the cameras see the traffic, while the loops are embedded in the pavement and are triggered by weight.

Robert Baker, the county’s signs and signals expert, says “you can adjust the sensitivity on both loops and cameras, but a loop that is too sensitive will pick up vehicles in the adjacent lane. Cameras detect vehicles by the change in the background.”

Mitchell says that it sounds like “cameras are better for little scooters,” but he wonders if the cameras can be dialed in for very small vehicles like “a bicycle for example?”

Baker says that’s a yes on the cameras for small vehicles, and says in fact the county has “a separate detection area for bikes on Prince with their own pavement markings. That’s also another benefit with cameras; multiple detection zones — I think at least eight — can be added without ever having to cut the pavement or adversely affect traffic.”

Around 24 of the county’s 55 signalized intersections have the video detection, Baker says.

The city does not use video detection at its 550-or-so signalized intersections, so adjusting sensitivity to the sweet spot that detects enough but not too much is the art city traffic engineering folks have to master.

ACADEMY AND EUBANK GETTING NEW PAVEMENT: Hugh Church emails “what is going on at the Academy and Eubank intersection? It’s obstructive and looks mysterious!”

Mark Motsko, who handles information for the city of Albuquerque’s Department of Municipal Development, says it’s a “pavement rehabilitation project (with the) westbound lanes closed, traffic diverted to (the) eastbound side of (the) medians. Once the westbound lanes are done, we’ll flip traffic and do the eastbound lanes east of Eubank.”

Assistant editorial page editor D’Val Westphal tackles commuter issues for the Metro area on Mondays and West Siders and Rio Ranchoans on Thursdays. Reach her at 823-3858; road@abqjournal.com; P.O. Drawer J, Albuquerque, NM 87103; or go to ABQjournal.com/traffic to read previous columns and join in the conversation.
— This article appeared on page D1 of the Albuquerque Journal