Q: Every day I get stuck in traffic for more than 40 minutes trying to cross Highway 9 from the Lowell-Larimer Road to Broadway in Clearview during the 4 to 7 p.m. rush hour.
I notice that the reason for this traffic jam is that there is no left-turn arrow on each side of Lowell-Larimer Road and Broadway Avenue.
Is there anything concerned government agencies can do about this mess? It’s been like this for some time now.
Ed Ecolango, Clearview
A: Dongho Chang, engineer with the state Department of Transportation, said he looked at the intersection between 4 and 7 p.m. on a recent Tuesday.
"There were no backups on eastbound Lowell-Larimer Road (also known as Highway 96) crossing Highway 9 to Broadway Avenue," Chang said. "We counted seven vehicles in an hour making a left turn from Lowell-Larimer Road."
That is an extremely small number of vehicles making a left turn onto Highway 9, he said. He went back on a Thursday in January and again, there was only one backup during a three-hour period in which three vehicles wanted to make the left turn onto Highway 9.
"The traffic cleared out during the next green cycle," Chang said. "The rest of the time, the intersection did not have any delays eastbound on Lowell-Larimer Road."
Chang said his department has an ongoing monitoring program to evaluate intersections with signals to address those types of issues.
"We are puzzled by the alarming 40-minute delay the reader is experiencing every day to cross Lowell-Larimar at Highway 9," Chang said. "Forty minutes is an extremely long delay that we take very seriously."
At this time, however, Chang said, this location does not have the traffic volume to justify the expense of adding a left-turn lane.
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