Green Arrow

I never was much of a fan of the Green Arrow character in comics, though since they've bulked him up, given him an attitude, and generally supersized him, he's a little more like a real person (in the comic sense, anyway) and less just a clone of Batman without the nifty car. Though I am amazed how, like Batman's inexhaustible utility belt, GA 's quiver never seems to run out of arrows.

But there is a green arrow that I've been looking for quite some time -- its where you go to make a left turn in the local town to get to the library. The main road that you're turning off happens to take a left dogleg right at that intersection, which means that you can't easily tell how many vehicles are coming -- its either 'none' or 'some number greater than zero', which makes it hard to figure if you should punch it through the turn in front of oncoming traffic or be a Good Citizen and wait -- one or two cars, sure; twenty, let's punch it.

Well, about a year ago, they announced that they were going to fix that intersection by putting up traffic lights. I was mightily delighted -- finally, something to stop oncoming traffic so I can turn without having to hope I don't end up with someone T-Boning my car - but to my astonishment, thats all they did -- just lights. No arrows. What this meant was that for the three lanes of traffic that come to that intersection, only one benefited from the light -- the ones on the intersecting road who were turning left. The other traffic was mostly unaffected -- not better, not worse. Argh!!!

Well, this just appeared in the local paper:

The offset intersection of Walnut Street and Shepherdstown Road at Simpson Street will soon get a new look and, borough council hopes, a little relief from traffic. Borough council unanimously approved Thursday night to install left turn arrows from Simpson Street onto both Walnut and Shepherdstown. The vote was a necessity for Councilman Charlie Ryder, though he felt that the effort was a little late.“ When the project was originally designed, didn’t anyone realize (left turn arrows) were going to be needed?” Ryder asked the council. Borough Engineer Steven Barber cited that the original plans didn’t account for the amount of traffic that ended up flooding the intersection when the traffic lights went up.

Additional traffic, like hell. Has anyone ever seen more traffic come to an intersection because there's a traffic light there now? Hey, Clem, I hear they got the new traffical light up, down to the libarry... lets go see! I know we're a small town, but not that small.