Walking in Waterloo Region

[timc]

The reason I felt it was worth trying to explain it three times is that Ottawa (you know, the just as car centric capital city), their traffic signals don't have this problem. If you are late to push the button, and the light is already green, but there is enough time in the phase (or potential time, i.e., the light would be extended for a car) for the ped phase to run, the ped phase will be triggered when you press the button. So clearly it is possible within an Ontario framework and infrastructure, just not possible within the head of the traffic signal engineer for the region.

This exact thing does happen now at several intersections. I can't cite specific examples, but there are definitely pedestrian signals that will change with a button press without waiting for the next cycle.