(a) The city traffic engineer is hereby authorized to determine those intersections and lanes at which drivers of vehicles shall or shall not make a right turn, left turn or U-turn, and shall place proper signs at such intersections. The making of such turns may be prohibited or required between certain hours of any day and not so controlled at other hours, in which event the same shall be plainly indicated on the signs, or the signs may be removed when such turns are not prohibited or required.
(b) Whenever authorized signs are erected indicating that right turns, left turns or U- turns are prohibited or required, no driver of a vehicle shall disobey the directions of any such sign except as set out in this section.
(c) It shall be lawful for operators of public transit buses to proceed through mandatory right-turn lanes designated as such and such public transit buses shall be exempt from the requirement that all vehicles in the mandatory right-turn lane must turn right where lanes are marked "public buses exempted" in conformance with subsection (d) below:
(1) "Mandatory right-turn lanes" means those lanes to the far right of any street, road, roadway or highway which are designated by appropriate lane-stripping and/or which are marked "right lane must turn right" on the surface of such lane and/or are so marked by use of similar signs on the adjacent curbing.
(d) The city traffic engineer or chief of police is hereby authorized to exempt public transit buses from "right turn only" requirements only in those intersections where a prolongation of the subject right lane continues past the intersection without meeting any traffic obstructions and where a prolongation of the lateral curbline adjacent to the subject lane coincides with the lateral curbline adjacent to the right lane on the opposite side of the intersection. At all intersections to which subsection (c) is applicable, there shall be a sign posted prominently at the entrance to such mandatory right turn lanes and/or painted on the lane surface of the entrance thereto, the warning "right lane must turn right--public buses exempted."
(e) Vehicle operators other than operators of public transit buses using an intersection marked in accordance with subsection (d) are deemed to be on notice that right turns are mandatory notwithstanding the exemption for public transit buses. It shall be no defense that operators of nonexempt vehicles relied upon the actions of a public transit bus operator continuing through a mandatory right-turn lane.
(1953 Code, ch. 17, § 69; Ord. No. 4487, § 1, 5-24-76; Ord. No. 4521, § 1, 6-21-76; Ord. No. 5931, § 1, 12-19-83; Ord. No. 6148, § 2, 1-7-85)