I just got back from England where cameras are ubiquitous and it was a god damn pleasure to drive there. Not sure how enforcement though a camera is any different that getting pulled over. Why do we need to make the process of keeping the roads safe more difficult than it needs to be?I agree that road design is the #1 driver of our abysmal safety stats down here but it is what it is at this point so enforcement is really our only option. No amount of 25 mph and No Turn on Red signs are going to make a bit of difference.
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Spikes in the road that come up on red lights. So that anyone running them gets flat tires.
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Well, we’re not England. In fact, we fought an entire war to make sure of that.
(I’m just goofing around now but only a lil)
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I turn right on red all the time downtown…of course it’s when I’m walking. 
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I just received (3) 89 euro tickets from Roma traffic enforcement from a trip in June 2024 for “parking in the restricted zone” which translates to my friends and I getting our luggage out of the car and into our AirBnB in a tight Roman alleyway. We received no tickets on our vehicle at the time, so I have no idea if these are camera tickets or what, but I am pissed lol.
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Bingo. Robo-cops and traffic cameras don’t have reasoning, they just see a “violation” and poop out a bill into your mailbox and then you either pay or go to collections and destroy your credit. Seems, I don’t know… authoritarian, to me.
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So then what is your solution? Reconstruct every single street such that it is impossible speed or run a red light? (with what money?) 10x the size of the police department so that there are enough officers to enforce traffic law everywhere in the city 24/7 (I doubt 10x would be enough, and somehow I doubt that you would support that).
The city got rid of its only bias-free enforcement mechanism (automated traffic cameras), at exactly the same time as the police became hesitant to do their jobs for fear of becoming the next viral social media sensation in a traffic stop gone bad, and when social media and a lack of any enforcement have made reckless driving trendy.
And this ironically comes at the same time as self-contained ALPR Hardware as a Service (HaaS) products have made putting a license plate reader on every street corner reality: providing all the location data Palantir needs to build their intelligence models, but with no traffic safety benefit to speak of.
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I get that this is the “we hate cars downtown” thread and this isn’t gonna win me any new friends, but I think the no turn on red shit is stupid and I spent years turning left on red on one way streets before I found out this state weirdly doesn’t have that as a thing. I don’t make a point to turn right on red when there’s a sign, but I absolutely do it occasionally when there’s a clear line of sight and verifiably no one around. I do make a big point of driving slowly downtown and being hyper aware of pedestrians, crosswalks, etc. in general.
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It wouldn’t be necessary if more drivers were like you (actually paying attention). It’s not the cars that are the issue necessarily, it’s the bad drivers operating them. Of course not everyone is a bad driver - but too many people are.
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I mean, retiming the lights such that crosswalks get just as much or more greenlight time as cars would cost pennies and make driving thru downtown so unappealing people would go out of their way to avoid driving there unless they needed to. Too many cars on Person/Blount and McDowell/Saunders are thru drivers
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Giving people more time at crossings is great, but it doesn’t solve the issue of red light running and illegal right turns on red. Unless you somehow convinced NCDOT to time the lights such that traffic moves at <10mph (hell would freeze over first), there’s no way to cut down on through traffic downtown, there just are no other N-S routes through the city.
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That’s fair, and I agree in general that more drastic measures would be needed. Give me keys to the castle and all these N-S corridors would become 2 way streets, 1 lane each direction
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Ummm… 440 is North South on the east and west. The fastest route from the south being through downtown is a choice, not a natural outcome.
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Separately I’ll start I’d be for traffic cameras. If people really cared about big brother type of stuff, then they’d have no phones or smart devices.
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I agree, but is this not already the case?
The cross walks turn green for pedestrians before cars get the green light (for like 3 seconds) and then maintain the green as long as the traffic light is green. As soon as the countdown ends on the crosswalk signal, the traffic signal turns yellow.
The crosswalk vs traffic signal greens are slightly offset, but I’d say the timing is equivalent.
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Let’s do that after 540 is done. No need to drive through downtown. Just go around. 
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Yes and unfortunately it’s NCDOT who gets to make that choice; and since they won’t, that brings us back to the conversation of how do we get people to follow the traffic rules that we already have and the only feasible solution: bring back traffic cameras and install speed cameras.
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The flow of traffic is more important than the safety and flow of peds. Not my opinion.
The no-turn on red rule can be traced back to the fact that many, many people roll-through and don’t fully stop at intersections where right on red is allowed. Needless to say, the same is true at stop signs. They also often only look to their left or right to see that they are safe when rolling through an intersection. I know this is true because I watch them intentionally when I’m walking to make sure that I am safe when I have the right of way. If I only trust that others will stop when I have the right of way as a pedestrian, I’d be dead already.
It’s not that we hate cars downtown; we hate horrible driving downtown. The way to fix this problem is to have better enforcement.
I think that many of us have routes we’ve driven during our lifetimes that included places where we KNOW not to speed or break the law because you’ll surely get a ticket. I used to drive through some of those places when I was younger and took back roads to Myrtle Beach from Raleigh. Downtown Raleigh should be one of those places. This is especially true now that there are many more people living downtown than in years’ past, and many more people are walking and crossing streets by foot.
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On the East side there is Raleigh Blvd as a good option. However, the northern end starts veering east and doesn’t really go anywhere useful—people using it to bypass downtown will then clog up either Crabtree Blvd or Brentwood Road so they can “hop over” to Capital. A better connector up there would help, IMO, to encourage more people to use it. On the southern end though, Raleigh Blvd is an excellent alternative to downtown (especially since it connects to I-40), but the stoplight timing needs to be improved for better flow.
However for West of downtown, you’re right, there’s not really good N-S route. Twenty years ago, I would sometimes use Oberlin but honestly a bad choice now.
And yeah, people will say “what about 440” but honestly, that’s best only if you’re going from one location along (or outside) the betline to another. Like WakeMed to Crabtree Mall or North Hills to Lenovo Center. But if you’re staying completely in ITB, say, Farmer’s Market to Iron Works, every GPS out there will tell you to go thru downtown.
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