Making an intersection unsafe for pedestrians to save seconds for drivers

As a pedestrian I will take a busy light controlled intersection with a pedestrian scramble type walk signal over a busy 4-way stop where every single time.<p>With the 4-way stop there is never a time in the cycle when all traffic is stopped. The drivers who are present are continuously paying attention to what other drivers are doing which robs them of situational awareness to note pedestrians. You can try and time it but that&#x27;s risky. With the walk signal there is a brief moment in time when the drivers are doing nothing but waiting for you and are all stopped so you as a pedestrian can account for them in preparation just before you get your signal and make your move.<p>The author can get lost with this sort of textbook correct but questionable in reality take. Legally having the right of way doesn&#x27;t make you any less dead when the driver who&#x27;s got three other drivers to pay attention to doesn&#x27;t see you.

&gt; I captured two drivers ripping through red lights in that short span<p>Video actually shows two cars entering the intersection on yellow lights, which is legal. The rest of the article seems similarly exaggerated.<p>----<p>Edit: For those who disagree, please be aware that the stop lines are out of frame, so both cars are already in the intersection before they&#x27;re visible on the video. You can get a better picture of what the intersection actually looks like here: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;maps.app.goo.gl&#x2F;L37hZyvXs8BeWmFE8" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;maps.app.goo.gl&#x2F;L37hZyvXs8BeWmFE8</a>

This is a solved problem and it&#x27;s astonishing the world hasn&#x27;t just adopted the Dutch traffic engineering standards outright. It&#x27;s FASTER for cars and safer for people.

HA! I was about to tell my story and checked the article. My story is ONE block away from this intersection.<p>I used to work a few blocks from this intersection and would walk daily to the train. Crossing the street was daunting, especially when we time changed and it was dark. I started carrying reflective labels on my backback and I wore a strobe light when crossing.<p>I _still_ had people flipping me off, swerving around me, honking, etc for my audacity to use a crosswalk. Going to remote work probably saved my life.

&gt; Why don’t lights ever sit idle with the pedestrian crossing on and the cars must wait?<p>The author knows the answer as well as most readers do: because the intersection is being designed with cars in mind, not human beings.

It&#x27;s too bad they didn&#x27;t put a roundabout here, there&#x27;s one in the middle of old town Orange and it works pretty well. Terrible waste of money to make the intersection worse like they did.<p>It also says something that the behavior of the cars here isn&#x27;t even illegal in California. Entering an intersection on yellow and exiting on red is fine. Right turn on red is also allowed, and many people combine that with a California stop (though that last part isn&#x27;t legal). All of the above are extremely hazardous for pedestrians and encourage speeding.

Knew before I clicked: it&#x27;s a flat 4-way intersection of two large-ish streets where there is <i>ample</i> space for something else. Hint: draw a small circle in the middle of the intersection and take down the damn stop signs.

Aside from the debate, 600k seems insanely high for this intersection. No wonder this country&#x27;s infrastructure is crumbling when it takes over half a million dollars to put in a few lights.

This is an annoying change, but the cars in the video weren&#x27;t actually running any red lights. Doesn&#x27;t help the case to exaggerate.

&quot;pedestrians have to press the beg button, wait for the light to cycle through its routine, and then walk across the street&quot;<p>Quite often what happens is<p>- Pedestrian presses button<p>- Light doesn&#x27;t change for 30 seconds and there are no cars in sight<p>- Pedestrian goes &quot;fuck it&quot; and crosses<p>- Light changes red, after pedestrian is done crossing<p>- Car comes along and gets stopped at red light for 30 seconds

It&#x27;s very strange to complain that cars run red lights, but somehow not stop signs. I expect that if the intersection were as empty as it was when he was filming, you&#x27;d easily find people driving at a similar speed regardless of the stop signs too.

The county where I live recently (within the last couple of years) redid a two-way stop along the road I take to work. It used to be east-west that had the stop signs, but for some reason they switched them to north-south. Even more baffling, they didn&#x27;t repaint the stop lines so east-west still had those and north-south didn&#x27;t. It effectively turned the intersection into a four-way stop with extra confusion, frustration, and danger.<p>They eventually turned it into an actual four-way, thankfully. I think everyone would have been happier if they just hadn&#x27;t messed with it in the first place.

Very generally, if it is a busy place I actually prefer a highly controlled intersection with clear lights and signs vs 4 way stops.<p>I&#x27;ve had way more problems at 4 way stops than intersections controlled by lights.

Cars run stop signs too. They also speed. That’s an enforcement opportunity.<p>Claiming this makes the intersection less safe despite the engineering studies that were conducted is a claim made without evidence. Pedestrians not having permanent right of way isn’t a safety issue, as the author admits, it’s a convenience issue.<p>It seems like the author is against cars in principle and uses that bias to complain about something that makes it easier for cars despite having no demonstrable impact on safety.<p>I live near Barcelona and in the city, stop signs are very rare. Its signals everywhere aside from little low-traffic back streets — and Barcelona is perfectly walkable. Cars are more likely to roll through a four way stop than a red traffic light — especially if they don’t see any conflicting traffic. And at night, stop signs are less safe because you might be pulling out and a pedestrian walks out in front of you — while with traffic signals, it’s clear whose turn it is. Cyclists also seem more prone to ignoring 4-way stops than traffic lights.<p>Here’s a study from Montreal that, among its other conclusions, showed that signals had no impact on pedestrian-vehicle interactions.<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.sciencedirect.com&#x2F;science&#x2F;article&#x2F;abs&#x2F;pii&#x2F;S0022437521000396" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.sciencedirect.com&#x2F;science&#x2F;article&#x2F;abs&#x2F;pii&#x2F;S00224...</a><p>“… the models were unable to demonstrate a significant relationship between stop signs and vehicle–pedestrian interactions. Therefore, drawing conclusions regarding pedestrian safety is difficult.”

&gt; With the change, the light always sits green for drivers on Palm, so cars are now always flying through that street when they previously had to stop at a stop sign. Why don’t lights ever sit idle with the pedestrian crossing on and the cars must wait?<p>Where I live, this doesn&#x27;t happen because there&#x27;s not enough pedestrians to justify it. When I drive in Seattle, the lights never idle, but pedestrian cycles are always included.<p>With a non-scramble intersection, not including pedestrians by default allows for faster cycling, including for pedestrians that want to cross the alternate way. With a scramble intersection, I&#x27;d bet if a pedestrian shows up and pushes the button, an idle green will go yellow immediately. Yes, it&#x27;s a longer wait than crossing immediately as you would at an idle intersection, but now you can cross diagonally, so that may be a win.<p>It&#x27;s worth checking with the traffic engineer to see how they would decide to always include a pedestrian cycle, perhaps during times of high pedestrian use like during hours where students are likely to cross the street between classes.

So he is saying that people are running the red lights but were not running the stop signs. I would bet good money that the people willing to run the red lights would be more likely to run the stop signs than not, especially if they know there are stop signs on the other road.

Interesting thing here is blinking red for pedestrians before it turns solid red, indicating that you should finish crossing.<p>In Poland blinking green has the same meaning.<p>In Berlin and Sydney green for pedestrians is very short and basically lets you enter the crossing. But red doesn&#x27;t mean you shouldn&#x27;t be on the crossing. You can take as much time as you need to finish crossing. It feels way better from pedestrian perspective when compared to Polish system where green means you are safe, blinking green means you need to run for your life and red means that drivers can legally run you over and you are about die (they can&#x27;t but that&#x27;s how it feels).

I&#x27;m not a traffic engineer, but I think making this junction more &#x27;European&#x27; would mean one or more of:<p>- Forbidding on-street parking close to the junction, improving pedestrian visibility.<p>- Removing the sweeping curves and replacing them with sharp curves, which reduces the speed drivers can turn, and reduces the distance (thus time) pedestrians are in the road.<p>- Adjusting road priorities<p>But maybe it&#x27;s a lost cause. What&#x27;s described as a &quot;walkable center&quot; in the article seems to be a multi-lane traffic circle with some landscaping surrounded by excessively wide roads and lots of parked cars. I don&#x27;t see a single pedestrian-only street.

Could someone explain why we always put pedestrian crossings at intersections?<p>I&#x27;ve always felt like that is the most unsafe place for a crossing. In my city, there are a few pedestrian crossings with lights recessed from intersections. The lights turn on only when someone bumps the crossing button (which isn&#x27;t super common) and only 2 ways of traffic need to stop&#x2F;watch out.

I think the real reason this happened is staring the author in the face. He noted the necessary engineering and construction work, and some of the price tags for that and the maintenance. I think this has less to do with any car-friendly ideology, conscious or unconscious, and it&#x27;s just a boondoggle for engineering, construction, and maintenance firms.

Example of an insideously unsafe intersection that was changed to make it safer (for bike riders):<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=SYeeTvitvFU" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=SYeeTvitvFU</a><p>How it was fixed:<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=OpgpE6wjF30" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=OpgpE6wjF30</a>

As someone who lives in The Netherlands I basically just don&#x27;t understand anything about traffic&#x2F;pedestrian engineering in the USA. I travel to the USA quite frequently and I never quite know what the rules are as a pedestrian.<p>I&#x27;ve learned to look both ways and move quickly, but I don&#x27;t have the confidence or assertiveness that I do at home.

Saving seconds for cars is important. It adds up across all the intersections they cross, and makes travel time shorter. These safetyism arguments are tired because they never honestly consider the tradeoffs, particularly that cars have lots of benefits.

I hate the idea of crosswalks at intersections. I know it&#x27;s tradition, and why they exist.<p>But wouldn&#x27;t it make more sense to have crosswalks in between the intersections? ie: a few hundred feet away from where vehicles are intersecting with each other?

We have the technology to cheaply enforce most driving laws. IMO we should do it.

&quot;With the change, the light always sits green for drivers on Palm, so cars are now always flying through that street when they previously had to stop at a stop sign&quot;<p>I used to encounter an infuriating version of this during my commute through SF Mission Bay. There were several lights that clearly were on a timer but wouldn&#x27;t show the walk signal for pedestrians unless you had pressed the button before the current cycle. In practice this meant that I&#x27;d arrive at the intersection that had one or two cars waiting at a red light. This was clearly when I could have gotten a walk signal with no other changes required. However, without the signal I had no idea when it would switch and couldn&#x27;t walk in front the waiting cars. So I typically ended up waiting till the light turned green for the cars, they drove off and I then crossed as a pedestrian while cars clearly had a green signal but they were gone. I would have had to wait another minute or so for the proper right of way to come around again. Totally bonkers outcome to have to wait for the cars to get a green signal. This would never happen the other way around.

It seems like instead of trying to accommodate cars better, they could have made it worse, so they would avoid that intersection all together, promoting other routes todestinations.

I don&#x27;t know enough about this particular situation, but I wonder if they considered raised pedestrian curb level roundabouts. They can be much better for things like this.

&gt;The story focuses on a redesign of one intersection in this town. The case highlights how we’ve elevated the value of moving cars quickly at the expense of everything else, even in highly walkable areas.<p>We should all expect this kind of regressing in walking. Pedestrians and cyclists don&#x27;t seem to understand how this always will be a car-by-default country due to lifestyle. Yes, there are several cities bucking the trend with exceptions, but those exceptions are either economically able to buck that car-first engineering trend and build massive bike and walking infra or they have exceptional transportation alternatives (train, bus, and subway).

Huh, is that a diagonal crosswalk? I&#x27;ve never seen that before... does that actually cause a 4 way stop for all cars for pedestrians?

The placement of the traffic lights behind the intersection, and not in front of it, is just hilariously incompetent.

It never ceases to amaze me how many (fatal or serious) accidents (of all types in all circumstances) occur due to wanting to save seconds -- not minutes, hours, days, or weeks -- but <i>seconds</i>.

Eh, batching is pretty efficient, whether the traffic is people&#x2F;cars or digital. I wonder if the other safety issue about running red lights has a baseline for comparison with people running stop signs. I see both happening near me.

As a frequent pedestrian, the question of traffic light vs four-way stop sign depends on the details. Here are some factors:<p>- In NYC, for example, right turn on red is illegal within the five boroughs (you can always spot NJ drivers you don&#x27;t know this or don&#x27;t care). Right turning on red is incredibly dangerous for cyclists and pedestrians, way more than traffic lights vs four-way stop signs;<p>- How often the light changes is a HUGE factor. I&#x27;ve read that there are some pedestrian crossings in LA at lights that take up to 10 minutes to change. Ridiculous. But in NYC, or at least Manhattan, light changes are quick. I suspect it&#x27;s designed so a pedestrian never has to wait more than ~45 seconds;<p>- One way streets are better than two-way streets. There are less variables to be concerned with. Drivers may not like one-way streets. They&#x27;re demonstrably better for traffic flow, pedestrians and cyclists however;<p>- Having an island in the middle of a two-way road is HUGELY helpful to both cyclists and pedestrians. The ability to cross halfway in relative safety makes an incredible difference;<p>- Having separate walk lights for each direction when there is an island is the absolute worst. This typically hugely increases the time to cross as they aren&#x27;t coordinated;<p>- The speed limit matters. If the speed limit is under 25, cars rarely go too fast to be a problem. I&#x27;ve had Google Maps street directions that were basically &quot;just make a run for it&quot; across a highway with a speed limit of 45. There are places that say a road has a cycle path that is basically the hard shoulder on an interstate. Drivers will weave through those at 70+ to overtake 1 car. People have died that way;<p>- Traffic lights can decrease safety because drivers will speed up to make a yellow light. Usually I don&#x27;t even have to look at a traffic light to tell when it turns yellow. I&#x27;ll hear the engines revving up. I&#x27;ve nearly been killed this way when a driver accelerated to make what was a red light and they sped through a pedestrian crossing that had signalled pedestrians had right of way. This doesn&#x27;t tend to happen at four-way stops.<p>- As a cyclist, I tend to find drivers give you deference at four-way stops but this may depend on the area and if it has a lot of cyclists and pedestrians. I actually prefer to give drivers the right-of-way when they have it. For example, a driver may stop at a four-way stop seeing me coming when they got there first and should just go. And I know I wasn&#x27;t going fast enough to interfere with them anyway. This forces me to ride in front of them when they have right of way. I never like doing that.<p>So it&#x27;s hard for me to judge this particular intersection without knowing the full context.

&gt; pedestrians have to press the beg button<p>Please. This is the most drama-queen characterisation of a signal-controlled pedestrian crossing I&#x27;ve ever seen. In fact it&#x27;s the first time I&#x27;ve seen anyone grinding their teeth at the injustice of a signal-controlled pedestrian crossing.

I see decisions of the same type being made in the suburbs around here all the time, and the prioritization is identical. I think the issue is suburbanites and small-town folks generally have not experienced a walkable environment and don&#x27;t understand how pleasant it can be. They are usually ensconced in cars and go isolated from one destination to another without actually touching the community at all.<p>I was trying to advocate for bike lanes and no-through traffic for a few streets near our small town&#x27;s historic center a few months ago, and I&#x27;m sorry to say, to the community, I think I sounded like a weird European hippy. Even though I&#x27;m totally not a hippy and I&#x27;m American-born. I&#x27;m as capitalist as you can get. But I still think if the state is going to make design decisions on our streets, we should make decisions that make our neighborhoods better and ultimately more inviting and valuable.<p>The main opposition to what I was proposing was coming from neighborhoods that must commute from further beyond the city center to get to the highway that connects our town to the nearest major city. We have other, faster, wider roads to get to the highway from all parts of our town, but there are people that are adamant that during rush hour, they must be allowed to potentially commute through the historic downtown, and residential neighborhoods, to avoid traffic jams.<p>I was trying to explain that the bottlenecks are always the main streets that have the highway on-ramps, but to no avail. People like having many potential, fast routes to the highway, and they are deeply uncomfortable with you removing some routes even if they rarely use those routes themselves.<p>In other words, occasional car use is more important than daily, frequent pedestrian use.<p>And where were the pedestrians during this town-hall? For whatever reason there were none. Or if there were, they were silent. I was trying to understand why nobody else was speaking up when there are so many bikers, kids, parents with strollers, walkers with dogs, etc., using these streets that will be impacted by bad decision-making, and my conclusion is that young active people, and those with kids, have no time to go to town-halls. And the kinds of people that do go to town-halls are weirdos with design fetishes, like me, and extremely ornery and conservative people who see any change in their town as an assault on the AMERICAN WAY OF LIFE by perverted European-hippy Democratic Degenerates (into which category I have unfortunately been slotted it seems, though I&#x27;m embarrassingly capitalist and libertarian).<p>I would not suggest this will be the median experience in America. My town has a fair number of MAGA lawn signs, American flags, lifted trucks, Punisher stickers, etc., in addition to the tech community. So its a very specific kind of mix. I&#x27;m sure those of you in Berkeley or San Francisco will have much better luck.<p>My community has some of the strangest dynamics you have ever seen.

&gt; Drivers now do not want to get stuck at the light, so they are consistently running red lights<p>Police stopped enforcing red lights all over California after covid. And getting cameras installed is a Herculean task.