There are plenty of intersections where a walk signal comes on automatically, why do some intersections require a button push to initiate the walk signal when it doesn’t seem to make a difference in light timing or duration?
In: Engineering
It does make a difference here in the timing. Much more time if a pedestrian is crossing.
Some you need to push the button to get the walk signal, and it clearly says it, and people look dumbfounded by the fact they were too lazy to push the button now they don’t get to cross
We studied this in school.
Sometimes you give people a thing to do to make them feel better about the wait. A classic example of this was putting mirrors in front of elevators instead of bothering to make them faster because people spent the wait adjusting and people watching. Or putting cell towers near trains so people stopped caring how long the ride was.
You put a button for people to press so they feel like they’ve taken an action. Often they don’t do anything and aren’t hooked up.
As for why have them require a button vs. on a cycle? Likely how it changes driver patterns and traffic prioritization. You might notice busier streets don’t always have the walk signs go on automatically when people would otherwise be turning off that main road. Priority in that moment might be getting people off the road to not block traffic.
Another answer might simply be cost. There’s nothing saying it can’t all be automated with machine vision now. But cost becomes a factor and sometimes a simple button is cheapest.
Because there’s no point in stopping traffic for crosswalk activity if there’s no one who actually needs to use the crosswalk. At least in my area the button-activated ones are on busier roads so it makes more sense to only stop traffic on those roads when someone needs to cross.
The buttons on most crosswalks don’t actually do anything except make the pedestrians feel like they are in control. It doesn’t change the timing because it was never meant to.
People are talking about intersections where it does matter, when you’re asking specifically about the ones that it doesn’t.
Simple answer is to maintain consistency and expectations. People are used to buttons being there, whether it’s because they mattered in the past or they’re used to it matter in other intersections or they’re used to systems overseas. Not having the button on some intersections but having them on others would cause confusion. Maybe they wouldn’t realise that if there is a button they **have** to press it. Maybe some people would be so used to timed cycles that they wouldn’t even look for the button on intersections that require it.
It may seem obvious on an individual level, but when you look at large populations when a 1% chance of people getting confused is a significant number. Maintaining consistency just helps, even if that consistency is fake.
There’s also a discussion to be had around disability considerations. The button sometimes being there and sometimes not could cause issue for the blind or hard of seeing, as well as those with cognitive impairments.
Quite simply, because most of the time, these buttons are not even connected to the light in the first place. Pressing tha button makes you think it’s going faster, but it does not.
It does make a difference, it give more time to cross. The pedestrian lights will still change when the traffic allows but they won’t get the increased time, often times I have to run before the light changes. This keeps from holding up traffic lights when there’s no pedestrians there
The button might be there for one of several reasons:
* It might turn on a voice/sound indicator for crossing.
* It might make the pedestrian light come on sooner than automatically scheduled.
* It might control the crosswalk only during certain times of the day/night.
* It might be left over from a time when the crosswalk used to be pedestrian-controlled.
It can 100% make a difference in areas where pedestrians traffic fluctuates heavily, or is rare.
With the button you can alter the timing of the lights based on demand.
For example if you have a busy arterial road and then a not busy side road, stopping the arterial road every minute for a side road/cross walk that might not even have anyone standing there is a waste of time.
Better to only stop when it’s actually needed
It should make a difference. Where I live, at the intersections where I’ve paid attention, the green signal is noticeably longer if the pedestrian button is pushed than if not. There are standards for pedestrian crossing times, and it’s usually set to accommodate the slowest possible pedestrian. If no pedestrian had pressed the button, car-centric planning dictates that the cycle should be set to whatever moves cars through the intersection as fast as possible.
Where the ped signal comes on automatically, there’s two possible reasons: 1) pedestrians are so common there that they might as well always leave it on. 2) The light cycle when optimized for cars already allows enough crossing time, so the button would be an unnecessary step.
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