Drivetime Mahatma

Turn lanes not islands for walkers

Dear Mahatma: I live in a neighborhood off one of the main streets in Benton. Military Drive has five lanes. The middle is a turn lane. Most of the time the street is too busy to get any farther than the middle of the turn lane. Are turn lanes meant to be used only for people in vehicles. I am on foot. — Skating

Dear Skating: Please skate thee to a crosswalk before becoming a statistic. Yes, the turn lane is for vehicles. None of those lanes is for pedestrians.

Must resist urge to shout — yikes!

Drivers must yield to pedestrians in crosswalks at intersections, whether the crosswalks are marked or unmarked. But pedestrians have rules, too, and one in particular applies here.

Arkansas Code Annotated 27-51-1204 says a pedestrian crossing a road “at any point other than within a marked crosswalk or within an unmarked crosswalk at an intersection shall yield the right-of-way to all vehicles.”

Observant readers might say the law doesn’t prohibit crossing outside of a crosswalk. But common sense says that on a busy five-lane road, the better part of valor is the crosswalk.

Dear Mahatma: Is it possible for the Arkansas Highway and Transportation Department to pinpoint the 10 most-traveled stretches of highway and what percentage of total traffic they carry? — Irish Fellow

Dear Irish: The Highway Department took this question seriously and apparently assembled a team of statisticians, engineers and nuc-a-lar scientists. They used traffic volumes to make an initial list and combined adjacent traffic segments into longer segments. After which the team of brainiacs calculated Vehicle Miles Traveled and Weighted Average Daily Traffic.

Then … stop! Please, no more math. Just give us the answer. What part of journalism degree don’t you understand?

  1. Interstate 30, Sixth Street in Little Rock to Interstate 40 in North Little Rock, 114,700 vehicles per day.
  2. I-40 from Levy to JFK Boulevard, North Little Rock, 104,000.
  3. Interstate 630, Little Rock, entire route, 100,100.
  4. Interstate 30 from Alcoa Road in Benton/Bryant to Ninth Street in Little Rock, 85,400.
  5. Interstate 430 from I-630 to Maumelle, 84,400.
  6. U.S. 67 in North Little Rock from I-40 to McCain Boulevard, 83,000.
  7. Interstate 49 from Arkansas 112 to U.S. 71B, 81,000.

A tie for 8-10.

U.S. 67 from Wildwood Drive to Kiehl Avenue, Sherwood, 78,000.

U.S. 67 from Interstate 440 to Redmond Road in Jacksonville, 78,000.

Interstate 430 from Colonel Glenn Road to Shackleford Road, Little Rock, 78,000.

These segments, the bright guys tell us, constitute 7 percent of the vehicle miles traveled on the Arkansas Primary Highway Network, which itself carries 90 percent of the traffic in the state.

Vanity plate seen on a dentist’s car: 23pairr. Tooth repairer. Get it — 2-3-pair-r.

Vanity plate seen on a Volkswagen: VDUBYA.

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