two-lane street: Christian

[mindstalk]

I previously talked about different bidirectional two-lane streets in Berkeley/Albany. Gilman, which was narrow, and annoying and crossable; Marin, which was wide (parking, bike, wide travel, plus turn lanes), and a high-speed stream of death. Tonight I'll talk about Christian, also two-lanes, and even narrower than Gilman since there is parking on only one side[1]. It is objectively much more crossable than Marin, but has felt more annoying than Gilman, such that on my casual walks with no destination, I will often avoid crossing it. Why should this be the case? I don't know, but some ideas.

My main idea has been that it's high traffic enough that there's rarely a double break in traffic. Or, for that matter, even one break in traffic. At any rate, I usually have to count on cars stopping. Which they should, there are stop signs at every intersections. But (perhaps because there is a stop sign at every intersection), drivers here seem very grudging about stopping, often doing rolling "stops" even when a baby stroller is crossing in front of them. Crossing in the face of two such wannabe-rolling cars is off-putting.

I don't clearly recall driver behavior on Gilman, but whether due to more breaks in traffic or to better behavior, I was a lot less bothered about crossing. I do remember that elsewhere in the neighborhood, drivers were often very fastidious, making a full stop if I was anywhere vaguely near the corner, even if I wasn't poised to cross. (We'll set aside the other end, when a truck made a full-speed run through a stop sign, in front of my bike.)

A more minor idea is that I'm simply spoiled: since most of the other streets have only one travel lane, they're pretty easy to cross, even with high traffic, and maybe Christian feels worse by comparison. But Gilman also had easier streets; those were two-lane streets but with maybe one car a minute, though maybe that's so low that it felt like a different class. I dunno.

Also, the intersection at 2nd is (relatively) complicated, with a one-way street that forks into two, leading to a wider intersection that cars on Christian want to speed across to get out of the way. But I feel put off elsewhere, too.

I'd still mostly bet on my first idea: more continuous traffic in both directions, plus pushier drivers.

[1] Which, I belatedly realize, means it's probably the same width as most of the other streets around here -- just allocated as 2 travel lanes, 1 parking, rather than the usual 1 travel, 2 parking.