Reen Doser of Snohomish writes: “I drive Northbound on Highway 9 every day and the backup at 180th Street SE is a major choke point. It is very frustrating to wait through a green light to make it through that intersection. I have noticed what makes it even more frustrating are the westbound cars on 180th Street SE who make a free right turn on red to go north and they clog up the space for the northbound cars who have the right of way. I would like to see a ‘no free right on red’ sign for those westbound cars that are turning north. It’s our turn, not theirs!”
Tom Pearce of the Washington State Department of Transportation responds: “Whenever we get a request like this, we first look at it from a safety standpoint. If crash data indicate the need for such a sign, we will figure out what the message should be and how/where we should install it.
“Strictly from a traffic flow standpoint, allowing westbound right turns on red helps reduce the green time required to serve traffic on 180th Street SE. At that intersection, traffic on State Route 9 generally gets much longer green lights than traffic on 180th. Part of that reason is because drivers on 180th are allowed to turn right after stopping for a red light. If we did not allow right turns after stopping for a red light, we’d likely need to reduce the length of green lights for SR 9 traffic and increase it for traffic on 180th, which would affect traffic on SR 9 traffic.”
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