Fredville reviews requests for all-way (multiway) stop control using the multiway stop criteria in the national traffic-control manual. Those criteria are summarized below.
Background
Under the right traffic conditions, requiring every approach to stop can make an intersection safer. All-way stops work best where the streets that meet carry about the same amount of traffic. They also bring safety concerns of their own, because drivers, cyclists and people on foot come to count on everyone else stopping. The general limits on where STOP signs may be used apply to all-way stops too.
Guidance
Any decision to add all-way stop control should rest on an engineering study. That study should weigh the following:
- Signal on the way: where a traffic signal is warranted, an all-way stop can be put in quickly as a stopgap while the signal is designed and built.
- Crash history: at least five reported crashes within one year of the kinds an all-way stop could help prevent, including right-angle crashes and crashes involving right or left turns.
- Minimum volumes:
- An average of at least 300 vehicles an hour entering from the two major-street approaches combined, for any 8 hours of a typical day; and
- An average of at least 200 vehicles, pedestrians and bicyclists an hour entering from the two minor-street approaches combined during the same 8 hours, with minor-street drivers delayed at least 30 seconds each, on average, during the busiest hour; but
- Where the 85th-percentile speed of major-street traffic is above 40 mph (65 km/h), the vehicle volume minimums are reduced to 70 percent of the numbers above.
- Close on several counts: where no one item above is fully met, but the crash history and the first two volume items are each met to at least 80 percent of their minimums. The reduced-speed adjustment does not count toward this test.
Other factors that may be considered
- A need to manage conflicts with left-turning traffic
- A need to manage conflicts between vehicles and pedestrians near places that draw heavy foot traffic
- Intersections where a driver who has already stopped still cannot see cross traffic well enough to proceed safely unless that traffic must stop as well
- The meeting point of two residential collector streets with similar design and traffic patterns, where an all-way stop would help the intersection operate better
To ask for a review of a specific intersection, contact Transportation and Mobility Services through the city's main line, (555) 010-0311.
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