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.<p>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.<p>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.
> This is to reduce overnight noise for local residents<p>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:<p>* 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<p>* 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<p>* 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 <i>your</i> green after 90 seconds.<p>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 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.
Oh, Sydney! I lived there for a few years. Their common four-way intersections that only had three pedestrian crossings drove me mad.<p>Drivers there are also turn into homicidal maniacs as soon as they spot a push bike.
Surprised the instructions are so simple!<p>Sydney, home of the ridiculous parking signs: <a href="https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-03-21/quiz-sydney-confusing-parking-signs/10683014" rel="nofollow">https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-03-21/quiz-sydney-confusing...</a><p>Best strategy there is just read the no stopping/clearway first,
then if you can stop, stop and read the rest!
This is really dangerous.<p>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.<p>So this will disproportionately endanger people walking at night--which is already the peak time for driver-inflicted fatalities.
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.<p>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!
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.<p>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.<p>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.
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.<p>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.<p>So for me the sticker reads: "we are too incompetent at programming" :).<p>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.<p>[0]: <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pedestrian_scramble" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pedestrian_scramble</a>
This is probably the worst way to implement this.<p>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.<p>If you are gonna have the beg buttons, have them all the time, so it doesn't just end up creating more confusion.
This seems reasonable.<p>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.<p>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?
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.<p>Absolutely maddening. They should never use whatever company they contracted to design those again
A solution that solves the noise problem without returning to beg buttons, is to make the intersection a flashing red at night. It becomes a 4 way stop where pedestrians have the right of way. Everyone wins.
I have worked with TfNSW SCATS ("Sydney Coordinated Adaptive Traffic System") in another city. No need for the sticker: this behavior for ped requests is typical.
I don't remember Sydney as particularly pedestrian-hostile, i.e. having to wait for extended time unt
turns green.<p>I do remember Edinburgh as very pedestrian hostile: At nearly every interesection pedestrians had to wait for a felt eternity.<p>(Both observations pre pandemic.)<p>Instead of anecdotal data cities should be obliged to publish statistical waiting times according to a standadized model.
I've always been confused about these. If you push the button, and it's an intersection with walk signs going both north/south and east/west, which one of those lights does the button apply to?<p>(I don't live in Australia, but you do occasionally see them in America.)
For non-Australian readers already familiar with 'Aussies' I can confirm; Yes, if there isn't any traffic, we just cross anyway.<p>I'm a late boomer, you're more likely to be run over by a bus than booked for J-walking here.<p>Merry Christmas.
I'm always... astonished? Surprised? Amazed? At how incredibly stupid certain decision taken by governments or local authorities can be.<p>"what were they thinking?" is what pops in my head. Am I alone in this?
Would it really be that hard to have something to detect the presence of pedestrians near the crossing and insert pedestrian cross cycles while they're there?
I thought they changed this during the pandemic to save lives by preventing the spread of Covid (because everybody touches the same button, thus causing Covid to spread).<p>Isn't forcing people to press this button a huge risk to catching Covid? I wonder how many people will die because of this change