This week on Carolina Curious, longtime Winston-Salem resident Martha Apple has a question that’s fairly pedestrian. She and her husband recently moved downtown. They enjoy exploring the city by foot, but sometimes things get a bit dicey.
“I would like to know the origin of the turning right on red rule, and why we allow it where there is a high level of pedestrian traffic,” asks Apple.
For Deputy Director of Transportation for the city, Jeff Fansler, the answer is straightforward.
“Right turn on red is a metric really of efficiency,” he says. “What we’re trying to do is allow movement that is based on limiting vehicular delay.”
And he says limiting vehicular delay is a big deal in this city with lots of small, closed blocks downtown, that could otherwise be a recipe for gridlock. But Fansler is sympathetic to the