The last thing drivers need on Warren Avenue. is another stoplight.

Stoplights at 6th Street, 11th Street, 16th Street, Sheridan Road, Sylvan Way, and Riddell Road are already brutal on commuters. There is no “timing” of the lights, where a typical driver would expect to start heading Northbound on Warren from 6th Street and make it through Riddell Road at a 30 mph pace and make all the lights. With the Kitsap Transit’s eastside transfer station located at Sylvan Way, where bus drivers have the ability to auto-change the light and allow bus traffic to have priority and change traffic patterns, it will never occur. Bus drivers routinely control the lights along Warren to hold up hundreds for the priority of a few.

We have enough stoplights, the stoplights just do not work properly. I worked at Olympic College for eight years. The problem is high school traffic using Broadway Avenue and 16th Street as well as the Warren Avenue light where the intersection at Broadway and 16th is the problem. Westbound traffic from Warren Avenue does not stop on 16th Street to Broadway Avenue and holds traffic on OC campus. Only a single lane from Broadway Avenue to Warren Avenue can escape the campus bottleneck while traffic leaving Chester Avenue and the S-4 lot are held up. The staging area from Broadway Avenue to Warren Avenue on 16th Street holds about 12 cars per 4-6 minute light change.

Solution: Spend the funds to fix the 16th and Warren light by studying traffic patterns and eliminate bus auto-change capacity. Turn the Broadway and 16th intersection into a roundabout to push traffic out to Warren off the Olympic College campus.

The increased traffic on Broadway Avenue is also due to the poor traffic flow southbound on Warren Avenue at 16th Street and 11th Street heading westbound toward Kitsap Way. Traffic will use Broadway to take a free right at 16th to use Broadway Avenue to 13th Street and connect with 11th Street missing the 11th Street and Warren Avenue light where you cannot get right when the lane is blocked for hundreds of yards, again due to a very poor timing sequence of the light and inadequate space to make a right-hand turn at 11th Avenue.

A light at 13th Street will push more traffic to Broadway Avenue from southbound Warren Avenue drivers heading to West Bremerton and slow traffic northbound and southbound on Warren Avenue for limited use at 13th Street. If the lights do not work together, you will have  a cluster of vehicles north and south on Warren Avenue bookended by lights at 16th Street and 11th Street with traffic trying to get out of 13th Street.

So, are we going to accommodate an institution of 12,000 at three different campuses for a community of 280,000? Please do not add a light at 13th and Warren. And, please pass this idea along if you feel it is plausible.

Mike Reese

Bremerton