$842M Yet Dangerous Slip Lane at Lomas and Yale Remains: Last Chapter

Summing up the current reality presented in the first two installments of this blog series:

  • UNMH has opened its $842 million expansion at Lomas & Yale.
  • Lomas & Yale is one of the most walker/roller traversed intersections in town.
  • Construction and detours during the years of construction made Lomas & Yale even more dangerous and less convenient .
  • City crews have recently appeared to finish up a “remodel” of the intersection infrastructure (beg buttons, crosswalk striping, etc.)

Perhaps the photo below is a nice visual summation of the actual extent of the Lomas & Yale “remodel”

Look close at the beg button. Yeah, they left the stickers on the beg button pole and just put a new button on it. Now I like, really love, the stickers, yet leaving them there is emblematic of the whole “remodel.”

A few trips out to Lomas & Yale, including one yesterday, confirms that the “remodel” of this highly crossed intersection, right next to a significantly expanded hospital, consists of nothing but cosmetic updates. The lousy, unsafe infrastructure remains the same:

  • There’s no “Leading Pedestrian Interval” signalling at the crossing you see above, meaning that any left-turning drivers from northbound Yale to eastbound Lomas get first priority over walkers/rollers;
  • A check of the signal-timing reveals that the required crossing speed is at least 3.5 feet per second, well over the 3.0 fps such a crossing should require, ESPECIALLY as the interesection is in front of a huge hospital. All of which means you gotta really skadaddle to make it across all those lanes of traffic and some of us don’t skadaddle as fast as we used to, hospitalization or no.
  • The wait time at this crossing is still really, really long, despite all the walker/rollers and presence of a larger UNMH that will have more folks trying to make it from Yale/Lomas. This is, of course, because well, you know, priority is always for drivers.
  • Perhaps most important, the “remodel” leaves the stupid, highly dangerous slip lane on northbound Yale curving to westbound Lomas…

Trying to capture the dangers involved in walking/rolling to that beg button with the same stickers on it makes this maybe the singular time in my life that I’d like to have one of those cameras attached to my bike helmet. The camera would capture, probably poorly, the eye movements necessary to safely approach that beg button through the slip lane from the sidewalk connecting the parking lot to the North Diversion Channel. 

The footage would most definitely not be suitable to viewers who experience motion sickness. 

But I don’t have such a camera, so here’s a little photo essay instead:

As mentioned in an earlier post, the intrepid walker/roller approaches Lomas/Yale from the north via this completely unsigned and mysterious opening/concrete ramp that gets you to a sidewalk.
Now on the sidewalk, you first see that, of course, other walker/rollers are at the crossing. There’s almost always some other walker/rollers at this crossing. As you take everything in, you see the traffic, see whether Lomas or Yale currently has the green light (hint: 99.9999% of the time it’s Lomas), see the dreaded slip lane, adjust your speed to get ready to turn around and see if any drivers are approaching the slip lane, knowing that you need to go through the slip lane fast enough to not be hanging around the death zone and slow enough that you can brake/stop at the beg button with the same stickers on it.

Got all that. Here’s the head turnaround to watch for approaching drivers:

Okay, that driver in the white big-ass truck is in the right lane, so they’re probably using the slip lane. They’re going downhill in a big-ass truck, so how fast are they going and should I go ahead and turn my head back around to cross that slip lane fast/slow before the driver gets there, or should I wait?
In this case I waited because I was also taking photos. The tableau depicted above pretty much encapsulates every walker/roller’s experience in trying to cross at Yale and Lomas. It’s dumpsters and big-ass trucks and slip lanes and general mayhem.

I could, and usually (as long-time BB readers know) do, drone on and on about it, but let’s just cut to the chase here: There are many infrastructural improvements needed at Lomas/Yale post “remodel,” first and foremost, we gotta remove this slip lane.

Absolutely, positively. It’s gotta go.

And yeah, it would be cheaper and make more sense to have had a discussion about this slip lane before a crew came out and merely prettied the slip lane up.

The crew out at Lomas/Yale on 11.26.25

And maybe such a discussion did happen between the City’s DMD, Vision Zero, etc. bunch and UNMH or local traffic safety advocates or walker/roller users or anybody.

But I very, very, very, very, very highly doubt it.

That’s a shame. And if such a discussion really did happen and we’re left with this stupid, dangerous slip lane after spending $842 million, including or not including the cost of this Lomas & Yale “remodel,” that’s an even bigger shame.

Let’s lose the slip lane. Thanks for sticking around through this three-part look at Lomas/Yale. See you out there and have a great weekend, everybody.

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