Left Turn as a Sensor Experience

Dear Traffic Talk:

In your response to the Feb. 11 question regarding left turns at White Oak Avenue and Rinaldi Street, I believe that you missed a good chance to educate people about the vehicle-activated signals at many intersections.

When a car passes the sensor it activates the signal, which will change to green in due time. However, if the car goes past that point and stops in the pedestrian zone, the sensor assumes no car is there and is inactive unless another car activates it.

By going into the pedestrian zone, which of course is illegal, the driver is forced to wait through an extra cycle.

Bryant Webster

Granada Hills

Dear Bryant:

The size of the detection zone in an intersection’s pedestrian crossing area is not a factor that forces motorists to wait through an extra signal cycle, said transportation engineer Bill J. Shao at the Los Angeles Department of Transportation.

But a vehicle may not be detected if it occupies most of the pedestrian crossing area or goes into the intersection, because that area is outside the detection zone, Shao said.

At least one of the pavement detector loops is typically installed right at an intersection’s first white line before the pedestrian crossing area, he said. The half of the loop is usually in the pedestrian crossing and the other half is right before the crosswalk line, Shao said.

According to Shao, loops are designed to detect a vehicle even if it’s located a little farther beyond the limit line. This is to aid motorists who stop a bit after the line when obeying yellow or red signals and who cannot or do not want to back up to be better positioned before the crosswalk line.

Dear Traffic Talk:

When the city built the new North Hollywood police station on Burbank Boulevard in 1997, crews paved Burbank from the station east to Lankershim Boulevard. With a little more than one mile left to continue on Burbank Boulevard to the Burbank city limits, the city should have finished the job.

Are there plans to pave Burbank east from Lankershim?

Ken Kaitschuck

North Hollywood

Dear Ken:

While the city has scheduled the repaving of that area sometime between July 2000 and June 2001, the project is on hold, said Robert Reed, a spokesman at the city Department of Public Works.

Workers must first complete a North Hollywood interceptor that will collect sewage and send it to the right destination, he said.

*

Traffic Talk appears Fridays in The Times Valley Edition. Readers may submit comments and questions about traffic in the Valley to Traffic Talk, Los Angeles Times, 20000 Prairie St., Chatsworth 91311. Include your name, address and phone number. Letters may be edited, and no anonymous letters will be accepted. Fax letters to (818) 772-3385. E-mail questions to valley.news@latimes.com.