It doesn’t make much sense to call an inductive loop a “beg button for cars.” It’s entirely passive from the point-of-view of the motorist: stop at the stop line, and the system will detect your vehicle and accommodate you. People on foot are, at many intersections, expected to perform an action. The action is fairly trivial (just pressing a button), but might not be in all cases- when someone is pushing a stroller, handling bags, not to mention if someone happens to be visually impaired or have some other kind of disability.
And then there’s the situation, which we’ve talked about, where someone arrives a second too late to press the beg button before the light turns. He’s then expected to wait another cycle to cross legally. So he won’t, he’ll simply jaywalk, which isn’t what anyone wants.
That is absolutely no different than a car showing up a fraction of a second too late, and missing the left turn arrow.
No- what I mean is, you arrive on foot to an intersection just before or just as it turns green. It continues green for whatever length of time but, because you did not arrive in time to press the button before it turned, the 'Don't Walk' sign stays on and, legally, you are required to wait through the entire cycle.
That's not the same as, say, arriving just as the light is turning from green, and having to wait through half of the cycle.
No, it is - because lots of left turn lights have their own lamps, and if they're red - you legally cannot turn left (even though traffic to your right is green and is going through). So in that case, it's the same - you have to wait for your direction's cycle, the perpendicular direction to cycle, and then, finally, you can turn.
In Waterloo region, most left turn lights aren't ones with red blocking you from going, and that's a particular crossing scenario, whereas all possible crossing scenarios for non-detectable users are impacted. Worse, you will occasionally come across beg buttons where your window is even more shortened: once the signals start to change, if no button had been pressed up to that point, the walk signal won't change for certain intersections, you have to press it before the cycle has begun to change.
I would prefer the walk signal to always activate on green and the countdown be synchronized with the change to yellow. Makes my intersection decisions as a driver more cut and dry without having to quickly figure out if I'm past the point of no return when the light changes.
I think the only reason they don't do this is that it gives the control system the flexibility to have a very short cycle in one direction (ie, one or two cars through).
As soon as you default to always having a walk, you effectively set the absolute minimum cycle time in that direction to however safely someone can slowly walk across. There are probably standards that dictate the speed at which this must be calculated.
Most people would be open to that thought, but I think we should also be willing to say that there are clear cut examples - King and Willis (the most central intersection in uptown Waterloo) and University at Hazel (the main entrance to a sizable post-secondary institution on one side, and the beginnings of the densest area (Northdale) in all of Waterloo on the other - where the dangers of encouraging unsafe behaviour at major pedestrian crossings vastly outweighs the occasional fractional trip time savings for cars.
* fractional time savings for everyone/optimized flow for everybody
Agreed King/Willis should totally prioritize pedestrians. To the point I'd promote seeing an "all walk/scramble" phase.
(07-24-2017, 02:45 PM)Viewfromthe42 Wrote: [ -> ]Most people would be open to that thought, but I think we should also be willing to say that there are clear cut examples - King and Willis (the most central intersection in uptown Waterloo) and University at Hazel (the main entrance to a sizable post-secondary institution on one side, and the beginnings of the densest area (Northdale) in all of Waterloo on the other - where the dangers of encouraging unsafe behaviour at major pedestrian crossings vastly outweighs the occasional fractional trip time savings for cars.
The thing is, the main thing which encourages unsafe behaviour is delay. Nobody will mind waiting 5 seconds for a walk signal. The problem is, this is counter to throughput (the longer you leave it green, the more traffic can flow). I'd be willing to accept beg buttons in return for shorter delay, and if we're willing to trade shorter walk times for it, then that makes perfect sense.
In the Netherlands, many intersections are actually split with a middle island, which makes phases much more complicated, but basically lets you turn only one direction red at a time, to let a pedestrian cross, further shortening the red times.
The construction on King at James Street just north of Uptown has closed a sidewalk with no notice quite a distance from any safe crossing. I tweeted this at city of Waterloo and they demonstrated so clearly how and why our current government structure frustrates me.
https://twitter.com/citywaterloo/status/...8133509120
They should not have attributed to the LRT in their first response, but it's true that King is regional and you should contact the Region.
The process on this should be streamlined, I agree; it's a bit too much to ask a typical member of the public to know the difference between city and regional roads.
That's quite a snipe from the City account, makes you wonder who's running it. Or they're just doing as the public does, and assuming that any construction is ION-related (/to be blamed on LRT). That site is more than half a kilometer from the nearest portion of the LRT line.
Definitely, moreover, I, someone who is intimately familiar with these details, far in excess of the typical citizen, still doesn't know. I knew it was a regional road, but I was under the impression cities dealt with the sidewalks.
If I'm still learning new things, what hope does the average citizen have.
