Comment by ajmurmann

"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"

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't show the walk signal for pedestrians unless you had pressed the button before the current cycle. In practice this meant that I'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'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.