Crossing Clark at Summerdale—BAD IDEA

This is a separate issue from the various construction-related closures occurring in the Andersonville neighborhood in Chicago.

Olive Avenue is a one-way street normally accessible only from Glenwood Avenue. When traveling north on Ashland, the best way to get to it is usually to turn right on Bryn Mawr, then left on Glenwood, then left on Olive. Balmoral Avenue is also an OK way to get from Ashland to Glenwood, although Glenwood has a lot of speed bumps on it, so Bryn Mawr is preferable.

Waze routinely recommends going from Ashland to Glenwood on Summerdale. This is a terrible idea. Summerdale has a stop sign at Clark Street. Northbound and southbound traffic on Clark do not have stop signs at Summerdale. Moreover, pedestrian traffic on Clark is constant, and pedestrians do not care even the tiniest bit about what drivers are trying to do, nor are they paying attention to it. Thus, to cross Clark on Summerdale, one has to contend not only with cross traffic that doesn’t stop, pedestrians crossing Summerdale on both the east and west sides of the intersection without signals to regulate their timing, and, sometimes, cars heading north or south on Clark that stop in the middle of the intersection because of other stopped traffic. If it’s possible to mark this intersection as a disfavored one for eastbound or westbound through traffic, it should be done.

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Thanks for your post! I see what you mean and crossing Clark without a light is a pain. Is there a specific time of day this is most difficult? I don’t want to restrict the entirely but what I can do is mark that crossing as “difficult”. I can set it for all day or certain periods during the day

Thanks!
Joe

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Honestly, it’s difficult pretty much any time of day when there are both traffic and pedestrians, which is from around 10 AM to after 6 PM.

Got it! Lets try this. I’ve made it a difficult turn from 10:00-18:00 on weekdays. After the updates hits the app in 48 hours, lets see if it still suggests that route, and if it does, we can adjust the times

@AmbroseHoneysuckle : You will need to make sure you have the “Avoid difficult turns” option enabled in your routing preferences to have your routes impacted by the setting Joe is enabling.