Traffic Blockage

I don't usually go home on Pancheri Drive, but today's activity made it necessary.

I won't do that again.

At the intersection of Pancheri and Utah avenues, this:

Note the green light.

No one was moving. You can see cars trying to turn left off of Utah Avenue went into the intersection on the yellow and got caught on the red. They were effectively blocking the intersection for those trying to turn left off Pancheri to Utah, as I was, because I already know the series of lights ahead (Pancheri and Capital, Pancheri and Yellowstone) are an absolute cluster most of the time and particularly at this time of day, say about 5:45 p,m.

The red circle shows the intersection I was stuck at. Yellow shows the lights further down the line, where reds were causing traffic to back up and idiot drivers were blocking the road.

A complication I suspect: Neither the intersection at Utah or Capital, operated by the city of Idaho Falls, have cameras. The intersection at Yellowstone does have cameras, but it's operated by the state, as Yellowstone is technically US 26/I-15 Business route. I don't think the city and state coordinate these lights well at all, because if they were coordinated, we wouldn't see traffic backing up from Capital or Yellowstone all the way across the Pancheri Bridge to Utah and beyond.

There are four river crossings locally. Two are clusters. This one, and the one on Grandview which turns into US-20 and intersects with an interchange with I-15. I usually take that route and get off and go home via downtown and First Street, which is a slow way across town - a good portion of it is 25 miles per hour - but thus sees a lot less traffic than the other routes.

This city needs some serious traffic planning, as does the county. Bless them, they try. But we have a good contingent of intersection-blocking locals who don't want things to change, even though things are changing. They're idiots.

Calm Down, Dude

Two accidents within a week at First and Tabor, right about the time I'm heading home from work (5:45 or so).

Both accidents looked as if someone were being impatient about waiting to get from Tabor onto First Street, though I confess I didn't get close enough to the accident tonight to see what was going on. All but one eastbound lane was blocked by the accident and emergency vehicles, so I opted to get off First at Evergreen to avoid the mess.

That led me to NW Bonneville Drive -- should have stayed on Garfield and gone through to Woodruff; I'll remember that next time. There were others on the detour trying to turn left back onto First. One driver peeled out and gunned it to get into a small break in traffic.

Three others -- THREE OTHER ADULT DRIVERS -- nearly ran over a pedestrian who'd pushed the button at the Hawk crossing on First at NW Bonneville, taking advantage of the traffic that stopped at the signal FOR THE PEDESTRIAN. Saw that kid push the button and knew some idiots would try to run him over. Sure enough, they did.

Dicks.

Slow down, people. Be patient. I got through just fine right behind these idiots, and I only had to wait maybe ten seconds after the idiots did their maneuver before I could go.

It's the illusion of progress, I think. I had to stop at Walgreens on First and Woodruff, and on the way home I went out at the light on Woodruff to get back onto First Street. I could see the green arrow, but we were backed up almost to Caribou, so I stayed put. Some other driver didn't and rode the turning lane all the way down to First, where I ended up just two cars behind him at the new red light. Genius-level tactics there, mind you. He really got to his destination a whole lot faster doing it that way.