The green arrow caught me by surprise on my drive home Tuesday. I was headed south on Abrams and in the left-hand lane to turn onto Richmond, a regular route of mine to get to my home in Lakewood Hills.
I’ve made that turn hundreds of times, sometimes sitting through three or four lights during busy traffic as the cars turning left yield to northbound Abrams traffic. This new green arrow would break up that daily clog.
It’s a little thing, really — a flash of light that makes it a bit easier for cars to flow, less likely for accidents to happen, and hopefully safer for pedestrians who regularly cross through that intersection. It’s akin to a repaved stretch of sidewalk, new swings at a playground, a filled pothole — tiny fixes that build the foundation of a great city.
The reason for the new green arrow? Someone complained. In this case, it wasn’t a 311 call but contact made with the office of Councilman Mark Clayton, who responded by asking the city’s department of street services to study the Richmond-Abrams intersection. When city staff looked into it, they found 14 service requests made to 311, dating back to 2013, for a left turn signal to help with the heavy southbound traffic.
Why was nothing done until now? Perhaps it has to do with the low-level priority of a minor intersection in a city as large as Dallas with probably hundreds of thousands of similar needs. Perhaps it has to do with the $250,000 price tag to rebuild a traffic signal, especially one more than six decades old. The Richmond-Abrams signal was built in 1954 and underwent minor upgrades in 1997.
In the end, the city didn’t have to rebuild the signal; instead, a 3-section head was replaced with a 5-section head for less than $1,000. It was a cheap fix, and an easy fix, to a problem that more than a dozen people had complained about and likely dozens more, including me, had been annoyed by but hadn’t thought to, or taken time to, complain.
The 311 calls were important, Clayton’s office tells us, because they supported his case. In the end, though, it wasn’t the complaints themselves but his actions to address them that led to the fix. It’s why we elect people to represent us at City Hall, to be our voice when our voices get lost in the cacophony of complaints.
Sure, it’s just a little thing — a green arrow that may shave a few seconds or minutes from someone’s drive time, or may keep cars from colliding. In and of itself, it’s probably not worth a news story. But it’s a reminder of what can happen when a councilman works in tandem with citizens to compel a city to operate like it’s supposed to.
