Road Warrior

Two other random transportation sightings

During a day trip to Cleveland on Tuesday, I came across this situation at the Ohio Turnpike's exit for I-90 near Elyria. Don't know what was going on with the tollbooth on the left, but I hope nothing like that is confusing motorists today, when traffic should be much heavier.

Meanwhile, on Sunday, the "Honoring Our Veterans" Norfolk Southern locomotive that I tweeted about in the morning came through Toledo around 2:30 p.m. on a westbound container train headed for Los Angeles. The engines were changed out at a BNSF Railway terminal in Fort Madison, Iowa, and there's a fair likelihood they'll come back east through Toledo sometime during the next 24 hours, but this special locomotive may not be leading the train during the return trip. I saw it in Oak Harbor, Ohio, on Sunday afternoon.

Where should Toledo's new red-light cameras go?

I have pretty much been a supporter of the red-light cameras in Toledo since the day the idea first came up. It doesn't hurt that during those 11 years, I've gotten only one ticket generated by them -- stretched a yellow just a bit too much, so I probably deserved it. But despite that support, I'm disturbed by the Bell administration's stated plan to use fine revenue from the 11 newest cameras, which city council approved Tuesday as part of Toledo's new budget to pay for recreation programs.

It's one thing to put cameras up when the motivation is traffic safety. Toledo has had a lot of problems with red-light running over the years, and an Insurance Institute for Highway Safety analysis released last year found that the city's cameras have been effective at curbing that. If revenue from camera-based fines is then also used to pay for more traffic police, who can step up "live" speed and red-light enforcement throughout Toledo, that's a win for everybody.

Declaring that the money will be used for recreation programs, on the other hand, severely compromises the camera program's integrity. Once the mission becomes revenue generation, instead of traffic safety, the temptation grows to tweak the system to be unfair to drivers if they actually become more law-abiding and fine income drops. The most common complaint about the cameras is that jurisdictions use "short yellows" to trap drivers. I have no evidence that Toledo has ever done this; as far as I can tell, the yellows on Toledo traffic signals are plenty long enough for anybody traveling at or below the speed limit to stop safely. But earmarking the revenue for ballfields and tennis courts only provides ammunition for critics who are suspicious of the whole enterprise and believe the cameras are a Big Brother-esque invasion of privacy, rather than having a legitimate purpose.

Beyond that, I'm not persuaded that all of these cameras' proposed locations will be beneficial. I'll cite the proposed location I'm most familiar with: the Anthony Wayne Trail and the eastern side of Glendale Avenue. Is there really a lot of red-light running by Trail motorists there? The inbound side strikes me as especially suspect. From my experience, a camera at that intersection would do the most good if it were set up to catch eastbound drivers on Glendale running the light as they enter the Trail, which I see a lot more often than any other red-light violation there.

Another stoplight I've seen severely blown on more than one occasion is on northbound Erie Street at Jackson Street in downtown Toledo. Yep, right by police headquarters. There have been three or four times when, had I started moving as soon as I got the green on Jackson, I'd have been T-boned by a speeder on Erie.

I'd rather not devolve into a debate about the merits of the entire red-light camera program, but I'm very interested to hear what other drivers think of the proposed locations. Do you have any better ideas?

Some particularly pointless aggressive driving

A thought for the unknown driver of a pale gold Dodge Stratus inbound on the Anthony Wayne Trail at about 9:50 this morning: You darted around other cars. You tailgated. You blasted off from every traffic light like a scalded rabbit. And you got downtown at the same time I did. Why is that? Because you caught every darned red light and wasted a whole bunch of momentum energy braking to a halt at each one. And I see people like you every day out on the streets of Toledo. What keeps you all from learning that the only things you accomplish by driving the way you do is wasting fuel, creating a safety hazard, and annoying everyone else?

Silly signs along the highway

Santa Claus was observed at the Major League Baseball festivities in Arizona early this week. Will he stop at this Woodstock, Ont., gas station to fuel up for the long trip home?

I often stop to photograph oddly phrased, unitentionally funny, or just plain dumb signs I see during my travels. What have you seen lately? You're welcome to contribute. Just please don't "borrow" anything from any of several silly-signs Web sites out there: I want to know what YOU'VE seen.

 

When the traffic lights are out

Finally, some rain in Toledo. Of course, I just washed my car yesterday, so it was guaranteed that the dry spell would break before too long. I had some fairly rain-resistant bugs on my bumper -- ones that hadn't washed off when the car was parked during a rainstorm July 2 in southwestern Ontario, where there was quite a bit of rain even though Toledo, according to folks back home, didn't get much, if any, that weekend.

But with the electrical storms comes the likelihood of power failures. The homefront in South Toledo reports there was a brief blackout this morning. When the power's out, most traffic lights also go out -- only a few have battery backup systems. And when that happens, remember to treat all stoplights as four-way stops -- even on main roads. Use extra caution when trying to cross the main roads, though, because not all drivers are tuned into this particular rule of the road!

Gas prices going up (surprise!)

If you still find that $3.20s regular at your local filling station, buy it. Toledo-area gasoline prices are bouncing back up today, to the mid-$3.40s per gallon. I expect them to start creeping downward again almost immediately, since that's what always happens in Toledo's volatile retail market.

Prepare for fuel-price shock on the Indiana Toll Road

While local gas prices have sunk considerably in the past few weeks, they've been slower to fall on the Indiana Toll Road, at least as of this past Friday.

On a trip to South Bend, I observed $4.099 per gallon posted for Mobil regular at the highway's two easternmost toll plazas, while the BPs farther west were charging $3.699. Apparently Mobil's pricing is based on the Chicago market rather than on pricing at nearby filling stations off the Toll Road, because any westbound traveler pulling into the easternmost plaza first had to pass a billboard for the Pilot Travel Center in Angola, Ind., advertising regular at $3.499 per gallon. I also found mid-$3.40s pricing in Elkhart and South Bend.

Amazingly, there were a few people opting to pay $4.099 -- perhaps because they were on expense accounts, or desperately needed fuel, or simply weren't paying attention.

Don't be one of those people. If you're headed to Chicago during the upcoming holiday weekend, or any other time, fuel up before you leave Ohio. Indiana Toll Road gas has consistently been more expensive than its Ohio Turnpike or sideroad competition during every trip west I have made in recent years -- especially so at the Mobil stations.

Wide range of gasoline prices in Toledo

I stopped by a BP station in West Toledo at lunchtime today and topped off my tank at $3.499 per gallon, figuring that it was only a few cents higher than I had paid two days ago at Alexis and Hagman and it wasn't worth driving far out of my way to save a few pennies.

So, naturally, I ended up in the Point Place area later in the day anyway, and found gas there to be 12 to 14 cents cheaper per gallon, and when I got back to the office I checked GasBuddy and found that in some parts of Toledo, regular can be had for as little as $3.289 per gallon as of this writing.

I wouldn't expect this to last without at least one "correction" in the next few days. According to GasBuddy, Toledo prices are now 26.3 cents per gallon lower than they were a week ago, and 43 cents per gallon lower than a month ago, with the lowest prices obviously being an even bigger bargain (relatively speaking, of course). The wide range of prices in town is indicative of a hotly competitive retail market in which some stations are selling below wholesale just to get the candy and soda shoppers to stop at their place instead of the station across the street.

Burning up a lot of gasoline to save a few cents per gallon is unwise, but if you know you're going to be travelling around town, pay attention to the prices before you stop for a fill-up. And if you pass one of these lower priced stations ($3.40 or lower) with some room in your tank, you may do well to fill up. Sure, the price might go down a few more pennies before it goes up, but when it does take that bounce, local history shows it will probably be a rise of as much as 30 cents per gallon. That's all part of the game with buying gasoline in northwest Ohio.

Let's go for a drive

For going on 18 years, I’ve been advising Toledo-area motorists on where the region’s major construction hassles are and how to get around them.

With this new blog, and its related Twitter account, @roadwarr1or, my goal is to expand that effort by providing updates about road work and other traffic issues in the region.

I may also touch on other things I observe during my travels about town, and welcome you to let me know about things you see, too. Because try as I might, I can’t be everywhere at once and, like everybody, there are many places I rarely get to while others, like my own commute on the Anthony Wayne Trail, are a regular part of my life.

Is there a particularly bad piece of street that never seems to get fixed? A traffic light whose timing drives you nuts? A sign that makes you laugh? These are the sorts of things I find myself musing about behind the wheel and I bet you do, too.

And if a new major lane closing or detour pops up during the week, now I’ll tell you about it as soon as I know about it, instead of waiting for the next week’s Road Warrior column.

So hop in, and let’s go for a drive.