City Howl Help Desk: At the George C. Platt Bridge, that's one long left turn

THE PROBLEM: Robert Scott is tired of sitting in traffic for longer than he thinks necessary. Every evening, he said, eastbound cars stretch at least halfway up the George C. Platt Bridge, waiting to make a left turn onto 26th Street, which leads onto I-76 West.

And it's worse in the morning.

The culprit? The majority of vehicles coming off the bridge turn left onto I-76. Scott believes that the left-turn light at the foot of the bridge doesn't stay green long enough to accommodate them.

Scott, of South Philadelphia, first noticed the problem over the summer, about the time that the Tastykake factory opened at the Navy Yard. On a typical evening, he said, he waits through four or five left-turn lights before getting on I-76 - which is generally moving fine.

So Scott doesn't do it anymore. Instead of sitting in traffic, he continues on Penrose Avenue past the intersection to a Sunoco station, makes a quick U-turn, then turns right onto 26th to get on I-76. "If I stayed in that left lane every night, I would lose my mind," he said.

When Scott makes the U-turn, his commute is a manageable 15-18 minutes. When he waits for the left-turn light, it's about 30, he said.

Scott is sure the city wouldn't want his new route - where he has plenty of company, he said - to become a standard traffic pattern. So in mid-January, he contacted the Streets Department to ask if the timing of the light could be changed.

Almost immediately, he got a notice that his e-mail had been received, but nothing changed. So last week, Help Desk decided to follow up to find out what can be done about the light.

This short light has been a problem for a long time: People have complained about it before. Steve Buckley, deputy commissioner of transportation, said the city performed some traffic counts and reconfigured the light's timing back in May 2010.

The timing "is oriented toward spreading the pain and minimizing the delay for everyone," he said, adding that the Streets Department uses software called Synchro to generate light-timing schedules based upon traffic counts.

Right now, the eastbound left-turn light from Penrose onto 26th operates according to a time-of-day plan, with the longest green light (47 seconds) during the morning rush into Center City.