Those Pedestrian Countdown Signals

Observations, The Livable Region, Viewpoint, Walking

Those Pedestrian Countdown Signals

Toronto’s Metro News has written about Countdown Pedestrian Signals . In Ontario its against the Highway Traffic Act to start crossing the street if the hand on the signal is flashing. Of course people being human will dash across the street, or be too slow or infirm to make the crossing within the designated time. It is…

Sandy James Planner

October 12, 2016

2 minutes

In Toronto there has been a horrifying spate of pedestrian and cyclist deaths in the past few years. Every four days a pedestrian is hit by a car. Every ten days a pedestrian dies. Since 2011 163 pedestrians have died. There has been a real call for enhanced road design, increasing visibility of intersections, slowing cars down to 30 kph and driver behaviour campaigns. Not much has happened-yet. Toronto has suggested working towards a 20 per cent reduction in pedestrian deaths in ten years, which means that the other 80 per cent – 400 pedestrian deaths and 3,000 serious injuries-will be acceptable.

Toronto’s latest answer has been to do an “enforcement blitz” to remind pedestrians they can not cross the street when the hand on the signal is flashing. While Toronto is harassing pedestrians New York City scrapped the countdown law altogether last month – framing it as a matter of life and death.

“Nearly every day, someone is injured or killed crossing our streets and it is past time we update our laws to adequately protect pedestrians,” said New York’s Public Advocate, Letitia James, after city council unanimously approved the change. “This common sense legislation will ensure that countdown clocks accurately portray the time pedestrians have to cross our streets,” James added. Pedestrians in the Big Apple are now allowed to start crossing during the countdown, until the ‘don’t walk’ signal appears.

New York City sees as part of their Vision Zero for pedestrian deaths that they are going to allow pedestrians to cross the street, and that drivers making turns into crosswalks must yield the right of way to the pedestrian every time-even if the orange hand signal has already started flashing”. New York has figured out that not everyone walks at the fast pace indicated by the countdown signals, and is giving disabled, elderly, and others the legal right to safely cross the street until the countdown ends.

With this law, New York City takes a big step toward earning its reputation as a “walking city,” and many traffic crashes will surely be avoided. Toronto? No answer yet.
countdown

19 responses to “Those Pedestrian Countdown Signals”

Dan Ross

October 12, 2016 at 11:21 am

It’s a car-centric Council in Toronto. Typical ‘let’s blame the pedestrians’ approach from councilors who are themselves ‘motorists first’. The walk signals have very little to do with pedestrians getting killed, as most of them have the right of way when they are hit in the crosswalk. In most instances it’s simply that drivers don’t pay attention when turning their multi-ton vehicles into a row of human beings.
If Toronto was serious about reducing pedestrian deaths (it isn’t, but let’s pretend), it would pilot a ‘no turn on red’ policy across the city. Reducing these turning conflicts would seriously reduce the numbers of corpses on Toronto streets. That would inconvenience drivers a little bit so there’s no way Mr. Tory or the Council would consider it. Also it might need provincial backing, so double nope. Good thing the dead don’t vote.

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1. Arno Schortinghuis
  
  October 12, 2016 at 11:57 am
  
  They could implement no right turn on red this with a sign or with a red right arrow signal head.
  When Vancouver was contemplating a target for reduced deaths and serious injuries of vulnerable road users, they were thinking like Toronto at first, but settled on zero due to citizen feedback.
  
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Geof

October 12, 2016 at 11:25 am

Pedestrian crossing signals are engineered to be ignored. They train people to disregard them by routinely blocking pedestrian movement for no good reason. Most of the time, pedestrians are quite right to use their own judgement. But sometimes they are not, and sometimes they get killed. Personally, I believe that the engineers who install the signals bear some responsibility for those deaths.
The typical signal will not change to “walk” only if the button is pressed, even if the light is green for an extended period of time. It waits for a green light long enough for a walk phase of T seconds – no longer (even if the light will remain green for some time). T has quite sensibly been chosen to allow an elderly person with a limp to make it safely across the street. In other words, it’s plenty of time for most people to cross the street twice.
In practice, here is the typical experience. If the light is green, the signal will read “don’t walk.” Pressing the button immediately will not change it to “walk,” because there are at most T-1 seconds left to the green phase of a typical light. So here’s the choice: run across the street (T is long; there’s probably plenty of time), or press the button and wait almost a full cycle of the lights (up to 2 minutes). The only way to get a “walk” signal is to press the button before the light turns green – but when will that be? The only way to be assured of a “walk” now, not two minutes from now, is to sprint for the red light, press the button… then wait for however long the cycle has to play out.
Worst offender: Edmonds at Kingsway, NW corner, where a pedestrian signal prevents crossing a single lane of often stopped cars turning from Edmonds onto Kingsway. Typical case: Brentwood mall access at Willingdon, which pretty much guarantees a two minute wait across a narrow, not very busy access road. (It’s a good teacher: I bet most people jaywalk.)
Clearly, the signals are designed to eliminate any delay to cars. As a pedestrian, the *only* way to get across the street without running and/or stopping is if another pedestrian already pressed the button. If you give a toss about the stupid law, it’s also best to run for ” walk” (cars get yellow lights; pedestrians don’t – at least now we get countdowns). This even though the cost of inconvenience for the person on foot (who may be running for a bus, turning a 30 second delay into a 15 minute wait) is far higher than for the person in the car. Even so, and heedless of the laws of physics, most drivers break the law and put the lives of others at risk when faced with speed limits that they perceive to be too low. It should be no surprise that pedestrian frustration leads to similar disregard for laws (though at least they put no-one else at risk).
Perhaps an appropriate response would be for pedestrians to the always press every button they pass, regardless of whether they wish to cross.

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1. Don
  
  October 12, 2016 at 12:53 pm
  
  I do that, push the button even if I’m not crossing….
  Main St and 30th. It’s the last crossing after a series of crossings heading north or the first crossing after very few heading south. So you’re either going way too fast north bound or frustrated at having just gone through so many south bound.
  Either way, it makes for a dangerous crossing where everyone guns orange lights (often right through reds) and/or people turning left off 30th see the ped light is on so they just blow through the stop sign and make their turn (unbelievable how many people do this) and/or they turn right onto 30th to avoid it and go way too fast (saw 2 crashes recently where one hit a parked car and one hit another car coming onto Main).
  In any event, the crosswalk is dangerous at the best of times.
  
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2. Dan Ross
  
  October 13, 2016 at 6:15 am
  
  So you’re partially blaming the engineers for pedestrians’ disregard for the signals when it’s inconvenient for them? No. We all have the share the road space. Traffic signals are imperfect, but the idea is that: 1) first you go, then 2) I go, then 3) the others can go. Both time and space are finite and the signals spell out who can go when with the least amount of potential conflict and fairness of time practicable. They’re probably over-used and in most instances they give too much deference to cars, but they are not subtle. It’s quite clear whose turn it is to go and whose it isn’t.
  You wouldn’t blame a traffic engineer if some motorist plowed through a red light because he was in too much of a hurry to wait for his next green phase. You’d blame the driver. Pedestrians should have more preference at most signals, but they are not without their share of responsibility for following the rules.
  
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  1. Anonymous
    
    October 13, 2016 at 8:16 am
    
    Many or even most intersections and signals are designed to have the smallest delay possible for motorists with little regard to pedestrian convenience and safety.
    
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  2. Dan Ross
    
    October 13, 2016 at 9:51 am
    
    That’s true. The timing plans are designed to move the highest number of cars, while pedestrians are a pesky abstraction who are reluctantly granted a few seconds. It’s not a level playing field. But that doesn’t detract from the fact that pedestrians also share some responsibility for their safety. Being in a hurry doesn’t give them any more right to just ignore a red signal than it does for a motorist.
    
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  3. Anonymous
    
    October 13, 2016 at 11:15 am
    
    Maybe it doesn’t give pedestrians a right, but it’s easy to see why many do cross without a walk signal. Especially at signals where you need to wait through 2 cycles if you press the button a couple of seconds too late. People aren’t machines and don’t obey unrealistic signal programming. At poorly designed intersection the main responsibility for pedestrian injuries and deaths lies with the traffic engineers.
    
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  4. Dan Ross
    
    October 13, 2016 at 2:03 pm
    
    I’ll agree to disagree with you on this one, Anonymous. If I use a fork correctly I’m probably not going to get hurt. If I decide to throw one up in the air and catch it in my mouth, I’m not going to blame Ikea if it doesn’t end well.
    
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Guest

October 12, 2016 at 2:11 pm

Just a note that in Toronto (at least in the early 1990s when I lived there) – the hand starts displaying on the signal simultaneously with the amber phase of the traffic light (i.e. very late in the cycle). That’s a significant difference to when the hand is displayed on our local signals.

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Guest

October 12, 2016 at 2:14 pm

… to clarify – so if the law has been in force for some time, it could reflect what was the practice of the day (i.e. illegal to cross during amber traffic signal phase).

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Eric

October 12, 2016 at 2:27 pm

You may go down but always remember, like the sailboat captain, you might have the right of way.

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1. Guest
  
  October 12, 2016 at 6:04 pm
  
  Nice one.
  Harks back to the “Drive defensively” campaign of the 80s and 90s (?).
  (i.e. So what if you’re right? Remember that when you’re recuperating in hospital (or dead) and will monetary damages be enough?)
  
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Anonymous

October 12, 2016 at 3:06 pm

Unlike pedestrians in crosswalks sail boats generally don’t have the right of way over commercial ships.

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Sandy James Planner

October 12, 2016 at 10:19 pm

Reblogged this on Sandy James Planner.

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jmv

October 17, 2016 at 6:22 pm

I always felt we needed an additional alert to notify pedestrians when there is an advanced green that will intersect with the crosswalk. The crosswords will state “Do Not Walk” as they usually do, but it is very common for that signal to be ignored. My compromise was to have a special red flashing exclamation mark to indicate this portion of the cycle. This could be done with the new LED style crossing indicators, something which we have had for the last dozen or so years. I would also parent this with a painted indicator “LOOK” on the street, which we did actually see during the 2010 Olympics. The pedestrian crossing at Alberni and Burrard is particularly bad for this.

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1. jmv
  
  October 17, 2016 at 6:27 pm
  
  nb: I meant crosswalks, not crosswords!
  
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jmv

October 17, 2016 at 6:51 pm

I imagined it would look something like this: https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/21748834/Really_dont_walk.gif

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1. jmv
  
  October 17, 2016 at 7:01 pm
  
  I had come up with this just before the counters became fairly widespread. I still dislike the fact that the white ‘Walk Sign’ generally gives you about three seconds to start crossing the street before flashing “Don’t Walk”. I also dislike the mandatory button crossings, which do not engage the pedestrian crossings at all if you do not press the button, not only because I don’t like touching things on the street, but because sometimes they don’t seem to work at all. I think it was the audible chirping indicators for the vision impaired that brought about these mandatory button crossings (my speculation), which on the one hand offers some benefit, but on the other hand, I still think there is a lot of improvement to be had in this field. Sorry for the multiple comments…I just couldn’t stop!
  
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