Comments on: Bill Peterson’s Blog: Cars on the square

By: Dave Newman

Dave Newman — Mon, 14 Sep 2009 06:45:16 +0000

Hmmm….

Yes,…it would be good to get all heads together on this. And you make good points about the traffic lights, flows, etc. It would have been good to perhaps formulate a final plan before spending all of that money,…but there is an infinite supply of that, right? (not!)

By: Ted Marchut

Ted Marchut — Mon, 14 Sep 2009 00:42:06 +0000

LBJ is not really built to handle half of the traffic that Guadalupe carries to IH 35. Once you get south of Cheatham, it becomes much narrower. If Guadalupe became 2-way, then it would have 1/2 the capacity to carry traffic out of downtown. Either that would make it more congested, or it would move some southbound traffic to LBJ. South LBJ would need some fairly significant improvements to handle that traffic.

I am not sure how that would sit with the people on South LBJ, but they certainly ought to be given as much weight as those who are downtown.

The change to 2-way would also mean dumping more people at an uncontrolled intersection with IH 35.

The alternative, I suppose, is to have LBJ 2-way until Grove Street and then carry them over to Guadalupe, but the further south the one-way traffic goes, the more cars you will see going the wrong way, once the 2-way section ends.

Two-way traffic on LBJ and Guadalupe will also lower the level of service of those streets (according the reports given to the Transportation Advisory Board), essentially offsetting any gains seen from the computer-controlled lights that we paid so much for.

So, it is not as simple as many people would like it to be. To date, the TAB has not been contacted since making our recommendation against this change. I would hope that we would be brought in for at least a brief discussion, if our recommendation is going to be disregarded.

By: Dave Newman

Dave Newman — Sun, 13 Sep 2009 20:00:13 +0000

The transition back to two-way streets downtown is being discussed/planned for recommendation to City Council, presently in the Main Street Board meetings.

Allegedly, the streets downtown used to be two-way,…. but according to several sources, they were converted to one way streets back in the ’60s to facilitate an evacuation, in the event of a nuclear attack (I’m serious!).

Not that it is totally an impossibility these days, but people are not installing bomb shelters in their backyards anymore,…. so the perceived threat of nuclear holocaust might today be outweighed by the economic and immediate safety benefits of reversing that (outmoded?) decision.

Most people, including the merchants downtown seem to favor two-way streets,….so maybe it will be possible to convince City Council to make a decisive move to enable that end result.

By: Jenn

Jenn — Sun, 13 Sep 2009 16:56:22 +0000

Or how about just getting rid of one ways all together? I see absolutely no point in them. All they do is confuse the morons even further and put everyone else at risk. Would it really be so bad if LBJ and Guadalupe became two way streets?

By: Jesse B

Jesse B — Sun, 13 Sep 2009 02:05:24 +0000

Speaking of one way streets, I recently witnessed a young (freshman?) student turn out of the dorm parking lots on Moon, past all the signs that would inform her that the street was one way in the other direction, nearly hit me because she was talking on her cell phone, and then stop in the middle of University to blame her misdirection on her GPS. Because it told her to turn right. GPS is not a brain replacement people…

People ignoring signs aside, it would help if the city would use street paint that lasted more than 6 months. It nearly impossible to see the arrows on the streets in many places.

By: Jenn

Jenn — Sat, 12 Sep 2009 14:48:05 +0000

As a cab driver here in San Marcos, I have seen it all. At least once a week I am frantically flagging to someone that they are driving in the wrong direction on either LBJ or Guadalupe. Further down past the square, at the intersection of LBJ and Cheatham, I have been witnessing an increasing amount of people cutting down the one way street to get to whatever establishment they are trying to get to despite oncoming traffic. At first I thought it was a mistake, they didn’t know, until after a few times flagging them they were going the wrong way, they pointed at wherever they were trying to get to and smiling and waving. Apparently the police have noticed the increase in idiots doing this, and what do they do? They follow the cheating car, down the wrong way with cars swerving out of the way, to ticket the cheating car. I find this just as irresponsible as the idiot that did it in the first place. They don’t even attempt to wait for traffic to clear before doing such an irresponsible move.

By: Kelli

Kelli — Tue, 14 Jul 2009 20:15:16 +0000

And what about those morons driving the wrong way down a one-way LBJ?

By: Larry Rasco

Larry Rasco — Sun, 12 Jul 2009 18:14:58 +0000

It is too bad you could not observe the intersetion of LBJ and San Antonio from you vantage point, you would really be amazed. The most dangerous aspect of that intesecion is that the yellow light on the stop light facing LBJ is no longer than any other stop light, yet because of the dog leg that San Antonio makes, it takes at least twice as long to clear that intersection. Anyone traveling north on LBJ that enters the intesection after the yellow light turns will run the red light. I bet you there are a hundred red light runners a day at that intersection.

I have been on the sqaure for 6 years now, and it is really amazing how few accidents I have seen. When you drive through the sqaure you should go no faster than 20 mpg, and always anticipate that someone is going to be backing out of parking space in front of you.