At the third WINK Listens event in Charlotte County, a viewer raised concerns about a unique turn lane at a major intersection in Cape Coral.
The intersection at Del Prado Boulevard and Hancock Bridge Parkway has a right-turn-only lane that some drivers find confusing.
Our WINK News team drove the route to see the situation firsthand.
Our drone footage showed drivers trying to exit the lane to continue straight or simply ignoring the turn requirement.
We reached out to Lee County, responsible for the road, to understand why the lane remains despite the road being widened years ago.
Rob Price, director of the Lee County Department of Transportation, said, “As a result, we get this request somewhat regularly, maybe once every year or two. We update our analysis. We kind of look at it, we may do some additional traffic counts, revise our intersection analysis based on the new volumes, and look at it and say, okay, would the intersection benefit from us turning that into a share through right or are we going to detrimentally impact the cubes in the peak hours, especially if we did that, because you get one person that wants to go straight in that outside lane. Now nobody can turn right on red.”
The county reported over 80 crashes at the intersection in recent years, mainly resulting in vehicle damage without injuries or fatalities.
For now, drivers should plan and remember that the lane is a right-turn-only lane.