Difficult Turn use on Maui

So for any of you familiar with Kihei, you’ll know that turning left onto South Kihei Rd can be an interesting experience. Locals learn to do it in two parts (i.e. find enough break in the traffic coming from the left to pull across and block the lane, then wait until you can fit in to the traffic direction you want, all the while obstruction one direction).

Visitors, on the other hand, sit at the stop sign for EVER, waiting to make a standard left. I know of many folks who would sooner do a right turn and go around the blocks to a stop light than make a left turn.

Do we want to make these left turns “difficult turns”?

I think any left without a light is a difficult turn lol

Yes, for some people, for sure!

S. Kihei Rd (and Front St in Lahaina) are special cases due to the amount of traffic on those streets - if you’re not blocked in one direction, you’re probably blocked in the other.

Do you have any particular ones in mind? My only concern about DTs is that there be a routing alternative that makes some sense.

Often the alternative routes are fairly lacking with our somewhat limited roadway networks, and given the “reduce difficult intersections” setting is turned on by default, I’m a bit leery of setting too many of them.

Well, I was kind of thinking of every uncontrolled left hand turn onto S. Kihei Rd south of Welakahao and north of Keonekai to start with.

In most cases, there would be an opportunity to turn right, then make a left to start an around-the-block turn-around.

I’m not sure it will work well, but this also seems like the application this is intended for.

We could try that as an experiment, and monitor. It may be that in cases where the alternative route is problematic, the penalty would be overcome anyway.

You can go ahead and set some, or I can later tonight. Would be interested in running a few routing tests, too.