Why not ban left turns on busy streets?

Maybe it was you.

Maybe you’re the person in the maroon Subaru Outback who cost me two minutes of my life last month.

Maybe you’re the character who was driving north on Wisconsin Avenue — one of Washington’s most crowded thoroughfares — and chose to turn left at a packed intersection, thereby pinning me and a half-dozen other drivers behind you.

Maybe you’re the dope who couldn’t negotiate that left turn until a yellow light provided a momentary gap in the thick oncoming traffic, which meant that I — and soon even more drivers who’d become backed up in your lane — were now trapped at a red light, our journey impeded by your poor choices.

What you were doing, sir or madam, was perfectly legal. It was also utterly wrong. And it’s time to put an end to such treachery.

Why not ban left turns on busy streets in U.S. cities?

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Anyone who’s driven in large urban areas recently has noticed two unhappy trends. Traffic has become slower and more dangerous.

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My fair city is a case study in the problem — and a potential test bed for the solution.

Last year, Washington had the fifth-slowest car travel times of any city in North America, worse than Boston, Chicago or Los Angeles. During rush hour (which is obviously misnamed), D.C. drivers moved at an average speed of 14 miles per hour, forcing us to spend an additional 83 unnecessary hours in our cars over the course of a year.

Slower traffic can often mean safer traffic. But congestion and frustration, spiced with ubiquitous smartphones, turns out to be a toxic brew. Last year, D.C. recorded its most traffic deaths in 16 years. Nationwide, pedestrian deaths have been climbing since 2009 and have reached levels not seen since 1981.

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Getting stuck behind some schmo turning left on Wisconsin Avenue isn’t the only reason Washingtonians have been twiddling in our Toyotas 3½ extra days each year. Nor are frustrated drivers daredeviling across a stream of onrushing cars the only reason for accidents.

But left turns are a major culprit.

Why left isn’t right

In 2022, more than 9 million vehicles were involved in a crash, according to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. Nearly 11 percent of those vehicles were turning left at the time of the crash, more than double the number turning right. These left turns also resulted in more than eight times as many deaths and nearly four times as many injuries as right turns. When the NHTSA examined crashes that occurred only at intersections, nearly 62 percent of those collisions involved a left.

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The answer, though, isn’t to ban left turns altogether — only in certain places and at certain times.

And Vikash V. Gayah has the algorithms for the job. Gayah, a civil and environmental engineering professor at Penn State University, has emerged as the Nancy Reagan of left turns, publishing paper after paper demonstrating why we should just say no. “The best design for downtown — for traffic flow reasons but also for safety reasons — is to use two-way streets and just ban left turns at all intersections,” he told me.

On most streets in most places at most times, Gayah says people should turn to their heart’s content. But on the busiest streets in our busiest cities, nearly everybody will move faster if almost nobody can turn left.

For example, in a 2021 analysis, Gayah showed that getting rid of roughly half the left turns at a city’s busiest intersections can reduce total travel times by about 15 percent. Other research has found similar effects. One 2019 study discovered that eliminating just 18 left turns in one German city reduced travel time for drivers there by nearly 12 percent.

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Consider my........

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