Comment by mindslight

> drivers getting frustrated while waiting for timed red lights to change at completely quiet intersections

There's a red light I run - frequently - in the mornings going to work. I stop. If the cross traffic has a green light, I stay stopped. When the light provides a protected green arrow for left turns for traffic going the opposite way, I'll run it if no cars are visible coming toward me. It would be better as a simple four-way stop, but our city traffic engineer is a self-important idiot who refuses to take even a suggestion from people who drive the area daily. I discovered this during a prolonged power outage that took down a route that I pretty much had to use to leave my neighborhood at the time. Outside of rush hour, the intersection functioned much better as a four-way stop than as a signalled intersection. But that was inappropriate for two arterials (one of them really is, but the other is only one at commuting times, and at off-hours neither is especially busy).

> I don't know why it feels like you're jumping on me here.

I think what you're sensing was terseness of response because I was writing on a phone.

> What you're calling an "at grade crossing" is indeed a good one I missed. I would call them something like crosswalk on a speed bump, which might be "car centric" or whatever, but at least isn't overloading a term that generally refers to using different levels for actual traffic separation. Everything we're talking about here is actually an at grade crossing.

They are usually called "continuous sidewalks", but the terminology is locale dependent (not every place calls them sidewalks).

> You really don't see the possibility of backlash to "no turn on red" everywhere creating a campaign of drivers getting frustrated while waiting for timed red lights to change at completely quiet intersections?

Anything that is perceived as a source of frustration will cause backlash. That's not a reason not to do things that have been proven to work better. Dedicated bus lanes and congestion charges always get backlash, for example, but after implemented traffic always ends up flowing more smoothly, which does make driving less stressful. "No turn on red" is the default in most of the planet. Forbidding it in cities (particularly downtown and during the day) shouldn't be a problem.

> it just removes the benefit. It would still take a generation or two to change learned behavior.

I think that people adapt much faster than generationally. And it is important to change incentives. Incentives affect us way more than we realize. Something as trivial as changing the coloring or texture of the intersections causes us to change our behavior in ways we wouldn't necessarily notice unless we paid a lot of attention.