Comment by dleslie 5 days ago
> Why don’t lights ever sit idle with the pedestrian crossing on and the cars must wait?
The author knows the answer as well as most readers do: because the intersection is being designed with cars in mind, not human beings.
> Having a stage where walk is enabled when there's no pedestrians around wouldn't much help pedestrians, and would introduce inefficiency in throughput
It forces drivers to reduce speed and come to a full stop; dramatically decreasing the likelihood of collisions with pedestrians they did not notice.
> designed with cars in mind, not human beings
This is a bad faith framing. The cars are driven by humans. Or in the case of autonomous driving, are driving humans around.
I've come up to plenty of lights that had the pedestrian signal lit even though there were no pedestrians. This happens during the day and at night, and is frustrating. Just happened the other day when I was driving around midnight. Not a pedestrian in sight!
If the designers were truly considering the well-being of the occupants of the vehicles then they would be designing cities to minimize the time spent in vehicles; which means more than saving a few seconds at a stop light, it means getting them out of their cars entirely.
That might fly in temperate parts of California, but it sure doesn't work in places with less pedestrian-friendly weather.
It is working great in New York City: traffic is down 11-60% with just a $9 fee.
Do you think people who previously drove into NYC are now walking from NJ? Or are they working remote? The photos of carless streets I've seen don't seem to be packed with pedestrians.
Drivers are on average richer than pedestrians.
In America, with our current wealth disparity, that leaves their interests wildly over-represented in policy and infrastructure.
More like voters are on average more likely to be drivers than pedestrians, so politicians favor drivers. In my experience this is even more true for poor voters as they generally can’t afford to live in walkable areas.
Usually a crossing will instantly switch when the pedestrian button is pressed, if enough time has passed since the last "walk" cycle. Having a stage where walk is enabled when there's no pedestrians around wouldn't much help pedestrians, and would introduce inefficiency in throughput. And obviously, drivers can't press a button, so it makes more sense for controls to be accessible to the pedestrians.