I grew used to not pressing these during the pandemic, so for a while after this change I often stood there for ages before remembering I now have to push the button. Thankfully I've adjusted now.
The comment about the crossing times being too short is spot on, often they are too short for me as a healthy young person. Trying to cross when you can't move as quickly must be a total nightmare.
Sydney has a few crossings where instead of particular directions being open to pedestrians, the whole crossing goes green for pedestrians and red for cars. This seems more efficient to me, and safer since cars aren't moving at all when you cross - often you have to share the space with cars turning left when you cross. I wish we had more of these.
In regards to ped/car conflict, it would be nice to at least have red, yellow, green instead of red, flashing red, green. I often get irate cars gesturing as if I were crossing on a red when actually they glanced at the flashing red. That just means don't start walking, it is the yellow of ped lights and it lasts a while.
The flashing red usually starts pretty soon after the green, you usually can't cross entirely on a green. It doesn't mean the person was slow or jumped the light.
Some other nitpicks:
As a car, you have to wait until everyone is finished crossing. You can't just sneak through the middle, or cut just behind someone.
Unrelated to lights but tangential, you have to give way to all existing traffic when entering a road. That means if you take a turn, and someone is crossing the road ahead of you, you have to wait. They couldn't know you were about to barell around the corner, and they are under no obligation to hurry out of your way. No stress, you will be gone in seconds.
"Sydney has a few crossings where instead of particular directions being open to pedestrians, the whole crossing goes green for pedestrians and red for cars. This seems more efficient to me, and safer since cars aren't moving at all when you cross - often you have to share the space with cars turning left when you cross. I wish we had more of these."
---
These are called "pedestrian scrambles", and I like them a lot more too. I do know there's a few in the Sydney CBD, but I don't recall them being marked particularly well that they are a scramble.
The ones in Oakland (picture below) are very well demarcated, and a study found them to reduce vehicle-pedestrian conflict though did increase the amount of people crossing parallel to traffic when the signals indicated "don't walk".
St Petersburg has very few crossings that have traffic light buttons. When there is a button, it usually comes with a huge bright yellow sign with an arrow pointing at it. So for me, when I visit other countries, it's sometimes very non obvious that there is a button in the first place — I'm just not used to them being a thing. So I'd stand there clueless, waiting for the light to change, only to realize a minute later that there might be a button that I have to press.
> This seems more efficient to me, and safer since cars aren't moving at all when you cross - often you have to share the space with cars turning left when you cross.
one of the features i loved moving to London: there's no "cars turning AND pedestrians crossing the street". yes, it does add a bit to congestion, but makes things more safe when walking, as well as when driving (and yes, i do both in London).
and it's still weird travelling thru places that don't have this.
The SF Bay Area has the opposite problem with crossing times. I regularly watch a person with a 3 year old, or with a walker cross the street in half the allotted time. On top of that, in some areas, all left turns are always protected, leading to 4 cycle crossing schedules (assuming no pedestrians).
4-5 minute traffic light cycles (a given light switching from red to green takes 4 minutes) are pretty common now. I think the idea is that they want to intentionally cause traffic jams to encourage people not to commute (public transit is spotty, and not improving).
You could claim that the 60 seconds per green maximizes throughput, but if you look at intersection utilization during rush hour backups (what percentage of the time is at least one car moving through the crossing?), you'll see that it's often well under 50%.
Really, they should have a "I need extra time to cross the road" button, and just time the automatic walk cycle for a fit 50 year old.
> This is to reduce overnight noise for local residents
Presumably this means the beeping of the signal for visually impaired people. Why not just keep the automated walk signals, but only enable the beeping when the button is pressed? This is how it's done in Toronto, and there are highly readable signs at each button stating this.
Well its a bit better than Adelaide. We were like Sydney and then the stickers disappeared and with it the "auto introduction" of the pedestrian cycle. However the times that buttons need to be pressed is a closely guarded secret. The local Council owns the roads and subcontracts traffic operations to the state "Main Roads" department. If there is a problem you ring "Main Roads" and the response is can't change anything have to refer to Council as we are subcontractors. Won't disclose programming either (Melbourne has it as Open Data) So we get such niceties as:
* Lights adjacent a shopping centre needing to be pushed after 6pm (or is it 7pm?) even though the centre doesn't close or die down in activity till 9pm
* Having to press buttons at each side of an intersection unlike the cars (e.g. for a North South movement a car arriving from either the North or the South will get a cycle, but for walking people if you arrive at the North East Corner and see someone at the South West Corner you need to press two buttons to get both sides lit, even though it doesn't affect cycle timing
* Minor roads crossing major roads that cross major roads stay green all the time for drivers, but not for walkers (but did prior to the pandemic). You need to press the button and wait 20-30 seconds or in some bad cases wait press the button to cross the major road as well to force a new cycle and then get your green after 90 seconds.
Frankly Sydney is streets ahead as it least its not a secret. But still as other commentators might point out, I've seen in suburban Tokyo to cross a major road signs saying "Between 11pm and 5am press this button to cross the road. If you are blind between 11pm and 5am press this other button to cross the road with a beeping noise".
The only reason I can think to keep it secret is they want the data from button presses to inform the cycle times, although surely there are better ways.
The person who decided it's a good idea to have a button next to a label that says "do not push this button" should get a small electric shock every time the button is hit.
I have a 30-minute walking commute to work, and changing back to non-automated buttons has added about 5 minutes to that if I'm not super lucky with timing. The worst is seeing the lights turn and knowing it would have lit up green for pedestrians only to have to wait a full cycle for the next opportunity.
Sydney CBD is a nightmare for both pedestrians and cars. A really forward looking government/traffic agency would simply block all cars between Macquarie St and Darling Harbour with the exception of the feeders to the harbour bridge. That would dramatically increase the attractiveness of the CBD.
There's like, one of those "3 only" in my entire neighborhood in San Francisco, and I want to have a talk with whoever at the department of public works who decided this was a good idea. I'm sure they're likely dead by now and no-one has changed this from the 1960s though.
I'm inordinately irritated that this quiz is impossible to ace. I got every question right but for #6, which has an answer format that makes it impossible to answer correctly. "Sorry, trick question," it says when you put in "0 hours" as the best approximation of the correct "you can't park here at all" answer. Like, I knew that … you just … made it impossible to answer correctly? What?
This is a silly thing to be upset about, but just … why would they have done that? It's so stupid.
People used to not using the buttons during the day may not remember to use them at night. They may not even be able to see the labels at night, since (unlike any actual road sign, at least in the US) they aren't even retroreflective. This is likely to cause confusion, leading people to cross without a walk signal.
So this will disproportionately endanger people walking at night--which is already the peak time for driver-inflicted fatalities.
If they can't see the labels at night so what? They use their daytime experience of expecting it to be automatic and wait awkwardly for nothing... or they push the button and the light changes eventually.
Most people walking past 10pm in the Sydney cbd, have had a few drinks anyway so guaranteed to cause confusion and increase j walking. Also the ambient noise detection does not work at all, I live at ground floor and can hear a nearby one and another one over 200 meters away clearly during summer night when I keep the windows open. the council turned it off completely after much complaining
I agree with this commenter and disagree with those calling it 'pearl-clutching.' If I have learned one thing in my life with regard to user interaction, it is to expect people to make mistakes and to do counter to what you would expect. This is especially important when life is on the line.
At every hour of the day people have to wait for a walk signal. Nobody is just randomly walking into the road and trusting "the system" to stop cars for them.
I think if you thought through this a little further you would realise it doesn't follow.
No one is just walking into an intersection as if the 60 second timing cycle is their circadian rhythm. There are also hard to miss sounds queues that go with the pedestrian signals.
There are no shortage of city intersections worldwide where the buttons are placebo and people b manage just fine.
I wrote a blog post about Transport for NSW removing full automatic operation of the pedestrian buttons (aka "beg buttons") in the Sydney CBD, evaluating each of their stated reasons why.
You may recognise Australia's parking button sound from a sample in Billie Eilish's hit Bad Guy, I've linked a video at the end of the blog post!
In the first sentence (currently “Transport for NSW (TfNSW) has recently installed these around the Sydney CBD – a sticker on top of a pedestrian “beg button” explaining the button is redundant before 6am and after 10pm”) I think you mean it’s redundant between 6am and 10pm
Sometimes when waiting, I tap out morse code on the beg button. I hope there's a log of button presses so that a traffic engineer will one day be impressed with the length of messages I've been able to .- .-. - .. -.-. ..- .-.. .- - .
From my observation, this is how they always worked in Australia (or used to work pre-pandemic). Automatic during the day, and manual at night.
This allows less stops for cars at night. At night on high traffic roads the lights stay green until someone presses the walk button, or a car arrives at an intersection.
Your best bet is to get into the habbit of always hitting the button. If you're worried about virus transmission, then use your elbow.
Which is better for the environment, and for the sleep of residents adjacent to the road. From that perspective, it seems like madness to suggest that cars should be forced to stop and idle repeatedly during the night on the offchance that a pedestrian might be waiting to cross. A pedestrian idling for a few minutes (assuming they require the guidance of the "green man" and are unable to assess the safety of crossing themselves) has much lower impact.
I would love if self-driving car pedestrian-, and intent- detection algorithms were deployed at traffic lights to understand when there's a person wanting to cross and automatically change the lights for them.
I don't know how we can align economic incentives to make this happen though. Maybe we just need to wait for a self-driving car startup to go bust and release all their code to the public domain.
My hometown - as usual - combines the worst of both worlds and installs placebo buttons. They don't do anything, but if you think it makes you feel better while waiting for the green light you can press them.
In my city some of these buttons have no function other than blinking after you have pushed them. But it depends on the time. Early in the morning you have to push it, otherwise it will stay red forever.
So for me the sticker reads: "we are too incompetent at programming" :).
My other thought: "these don't look official, someone private has made them for a joke".
I'm not sure of the point of those stickers. We have a very similar setup on many of our CBD intersections where I live (including the exact same buttons): push to request crossing on all intersections, with Barnes Dance/Pedestrian Scramble [0] crossings having automatic crossing during the day, and we don't have any such labels. If a crossing has been requested or is automated, the crossing indicator lights (and beeper) is active, otherwise it isn't lit, so you know to press the button.
It's only enabled between certain hours, so it's already creating confusion, but those hours also happen to be the hours people are likely to be drunk, it's likely to be dark so they're more likely to be hit by a car, pedestrians are more likely to not notice the beg button, etc.
If you are gonna have the beg buttons, have them all the time, so it doesn't just end up creating more confusion.
The only reasons the buttons were removed was because of paranoia over COVID spread through surfaces. This was done hastily so they made the simplest change possible, adding the walk to every cycle.
Now they've had time to program it properly they can let trucks and heavy vehicles through more efficiently at 10pm-6am. How many pedestrians are around at these times?
More than you'd think. We're talking about the CBD and inner suburbs, there are a lot of late night venues and people often use public transport around here which involves a bit of walking. And 10pm isn't that late, particularly on a weekend.
Trucks and heavy vehicle really don't have any business in the CBD and for the few times they actually have to come in to the CBD for e.g. some construction work, I'd argue it's completely ok for them to wait longer.
In Hamburg we have these, but even worse they are touch activated with a light if you successfully activated it and some of them don’t work. No one understands the gesture needed to make it function and every time I see people randomly rubbing and smacking it to try and activate it. Worst part is that there are some major junctions that won’t go green for the pedestrian unless you press it. Easily the worst UX I’ve ever seen for a public infrastructure. You can’t even activate it unless you are at the right part of the cycle. If you try and do it when the lights have just changed back to red for the pedestrians it won’t work.
Absolutely maddening. They should never use whatever company they contracted to design those again
[+] [-] roxgib|3 years ago|reply
The comment about the crossing times being too short is spot on, often they are too short for me as a healthy young person. Trying to cross when you can't move as quickly must be a total nightmare.
Sydney has a few crossings where instead of particular directions being open to pedestrians, the whole crossing goes green for pedestrians and red for cars. This seems more efficient to me, and safer since cars aren't moving at all when you cross - often you have to share the space with cars turning left when you cross. I wish we had more of these.
[+] [-] ehnto|3 years ago|reply
The flashing red usually starts pretty soon after the green, you usually can't cross entirely on a green. It doesn't mean the person was slow or jumped the light.
Some other nitpicks: As a car, you have to wait until everyone is finished crossing. You can't just sneak through the middle, or cut just behind someone.
Unrelated to lights but tangential, you have to give way to all existing traffic when entering a road. That means if you take a turn, and someone is crossing the road ahead of you, you have to wait. They couldn't know you were about to barell around the corner, and they are under no obligation to hurry out of your way. No stress, you will be gone in seconds.
[+] [-] GrifMD|3 years ago|reply
---
These are called "pedestrian scrambles", and I like them a lot more too. I do know there's a few in the Sydney CBD, but I don't recall them being marked particularly well that they are a scramble.
The ones in Oakland (picture below) are very well demarcated, and a study found them to reduce vehicle-pedestrian conflict though did increase the amount of people crossing parallel to traffic when the signals indicated "don't walk".
Picture: https://weburbanist.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/05/crossings...
Study: https://escholarship.org/uc/item/3fh5q4dk
[+] [-] xdfgh1112|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] grishka|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] kmlx|3 years ago|reply
one of the features i loved moving to London: there's no "cars turning AND pedestrians crossing the street". yes, it does add a bit to congestion, but makes things more safe when walking, as well as when driving (and yes, i do both in London).
and it's still weird travelling thru places that don't have this.
[+] [-] quickthrower2|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] iso1631|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] hedora|3 years ago|reply
4-5 minute traffic light cycles (a given light switching from red to green takes 4 minutes) are pretty common now. I think the idea is that they want to intentionally cause traffic jams to encourage people not to commute (public transit is spotty, and not improving).
You could claim that the 60 seconds per green maximizes throughput, but if you look at intersection utilization during rush hour backups (what percentage of the time is at least one car moving through the crossing?), you'll see that it's often well under 50%.
Really, they should have a "I need extra time to cross the road" button, and just time the automatic walk cycle for a fit 50 year old.
[+] [-] frosted-flakes|3 years ago|reply
Presumably this means the beeping of the signal for visually impaired people. Why not just keep the automated walk signals, but only enable the beeping when the button is pressed? This is how it's done in Toronto, and there are highly readable signs at each button stating this.
[+] [-] ehnto|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] kelnos|3 years ago|reply
How do blind people even know about these signs, let alone read them?
[+] [-] softgrow|3 years ago|reply
* Lights adjacent a shopping centre needing to be pushed after 6pm (or is it 7pm?) even though the centre doesn't close or die down in activity till 9pm
* Having to press buttons at each side of an intersection unlike the cars (e.g. for a North South movement a car arriving from either the North or the South will get a cycle, but for walking people if you arrive at the North East Corner and see someone at the South West Corner you need to press two buttons to get both sides lit, even though it doesn't affect cycle timing
* Minor roads crossing major roads that cross major roads stay green all the time for drivers, but not for walkers (but did prior to the pandemic). You need to press the button and wait 20-30 seconds or in some bad cases wait press the button to cross the major road as well to force a new cycle and then get your green after 90 seconds.
Frankly Sydney is streets ahead as it least its not a secret. But still as other commentators might point out, I've seen in suburban Tokyo to cross a major road signs saying "Between 11pm and 5am press this button to cross the road. If you are blind between 11pm and 5am press this other button to cross the road with a beeping noise".
[+] [-] roxgib|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jupp0r|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] codeyperson|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] daniel_sim|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] kmlx|3 years ago|reply
isn't that like 10 mins cycling?
[+] [-] cycomanic|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] eru|3 years ago|reply
Drivers there are also turn into homicidal maniacs as soon as they spot a push bike.
[+] [-] thatfrenchguy|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] quickthrower2|3 years ago|reply
Sydney, home of the ridiculous parking signs: https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-03-21/quiz-sydney-confusing...
Best strategy there is just read the no stopping/clearway first, then if you can stop, stop and read the rest!
[+] [-] inasmuch|3 years ago|reply
This is a silly thing to be upset about, but just … why would they have done that? It's so stupid.
[+] [-] jasonhansel|3 years ago|reply
People used to not using the buttons during the day may not remember to use them at night. They may not even be able to see the labels at night, since (unlike any actual road sign, at least in the US) they aren't even retroreflective. This is likely to cause confusion, leading people to cross without a walk signal.
So this will disproportionately endanger people walking at night--which is already the peak time for driver-inflicted fatalities.
[+] [-] nhinck2|3 years ago|reply
If they can't see the labels at night so what? They use their daytime experience of expecting it to be automatic and wait awkwardly for nothing... or they push the button and the light changes eventually.
[+] [-] destroy-2A|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] MollyRealized|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] lozenge|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ndsipa_pomu|3 years ago|reply
Any stats on that? I thought that daytime tends to have more total incidents, but that is usually when the amount of traffic peaks too.
Edit: From https://www.lhd.com.au/lhd-insights/australian-road-death-st... it would appear that 3-4pm in the afternoon is the most dangerous time. Peak traffic and possible fatigue effects.
[+] [-] kuhewa|3 years ago|reply
No one is just walking into an intersection as if the 60 second timing cycle is their circadian rhythm. There are also hard to miss sounds queues that go with the pedestrian signals.
There are no shortage of city intersections worldwide where the buttons are placebo and people b manage just fine.
[+] [-] jakecopp|3 years ago|reply
You may recognise Australia's parking button sound from a sample in Billie Eilish's hit Bad Guy, I've linked a video at the end of the blog post!
[+] [-] Someone|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] wkat4242|3 years ago|reply
When I was in Sydney it reminded me more of an 80s arcade game :)
[+] [-] unknown|3 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] roxgib|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] IIAOPSW|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] rbut|3 years ago|reply
This allows less stops for cars at night. At night on high traffic roads the lights stay green until someone presses the walk button, or a car arrives at an intersection.
Your best bet is to get into the habbit of always hitting the button. If you're worried about virus transmission, then use your elbow.
[+] [-] jhugo|3 years ago|reply
Which is better for the environment, and for the sleep of residents adjacent to the road. From that perspective, it seems like madness to suggest that cars should be forced to stop and idle repeatedly during the night on the offchance that a pedestrian might be waiting to cross. A pedestrian idling for a few minutes (assuming they require the guidance of the "green man" and are unable to assess the safety of crossing themselves) has much lower impact.
[+] [-] exclipy|3 years ago|reply
I don't know how we can align economic incentives to make this happen though. Maybe we just need to wait for a self-driving car startup to go bust and release all their code to the public domain.
[+] [-] alpaca128|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] discobean|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] schipplock|3 years ago|reply
So for me the sticker reads: "we are too incompetent at programming" :).
My other thought: "these don't look official, someone private has made them for a joke".
[+] [-] Aaron2222|3 years ago|reply
[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pedestrian_scramble
[+] [-] asdajksah2123|3 years ago|reply
It's only enabled between certain hours, so it's already creating confusion, but those hours also happen to be the hours people are likely to be drunk, it's likely to be dark so they're more likely to be hit by a car, pedestrians are more likely to not notice the beg button, etc.
If you are gonna have the beg buttons, have them all the time, so it doesn't just end up creating more confusion.
[+] [-] geenew|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] lozenge|3 years ago|reply
The only reasons the buttons were removed was because of paranoia over COVID spread through surfaces. This was done hastily so they made the simplest change possible, adding the walk to every cycle.
Now they've had time to program it properly they can let trucks and heavy vehicles through more efficiently at 10pm-6am. How many pedestrians are around at these times?
[+] [-] roxgib|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] cycomanic|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] bowsamic|3 years ago|reply
Absolutely maddening. They should never use whatever company they contracted to design those again