[hawkinspeter]

https://www.bristolpost.co.uk/news/bristol-news/bristol-pedestrians-immediate-priority-over-10030026

Pedestrians are set to be given priority over vehicles at traffic light crossings across Bristol, with the amber stop light for cars appearing immediately after someone presses the wait button.

City councillors are being advised to approve plans to re-programme all 100 pelican, puffin and toucan crossings so that if no one has approached one for 30 seconds, traffic is stopped and the green man appears the moment someone pushes the button.

Topic

[wtjs]

Superbly put!

Superbly put!

[chrisonabike]

It would be best if motorists
It would be best if motorists had to push the button; but the red light has already come on for that idea (“What about emergency vehicles / disabled drivers who can’t easily get out or don’t have hands / lone women drivers at night …”)

I think the main benefit is almost “political” – through the medium of infra it’s saying there are at least some places where the convenience of a few people in motor vehicles does not always come above that of (potentially far more people) on foot. (Normally we’re stuck at motorist convenience is more important than others’ *safety*).

A really expensive way to do that? *Everything* is really expensive when we add in motoring. The only thing more expensive is *unrestricted* motoring.

[Bmblbzzz]

Tom_77 wrote:

slc wrote:

Why stop there ? How about the crossings remaining green for pedestrians until a vehicle pulls up at the lights and waits 30 seconds? I guess it would be annoying on the bike but I reckon I could cope.

London has some crossings like that – New TfL data shows success of innovative ‘pedestrian priority’ traffic signals

There’s a YouTube video showing one in action.

The average location involved in the trial displayed a green pedestrian signal for an extra 56 minutes a day.

How is it only an extra 56 minutes a day? That seems to imply either the road is very busy with vehicles, in which case it might not be delivering much benefit, or it already spends most of the time green for pedestrians. In fact, we’re not told exactly how the crossing works now. If there’s a constant stream of vehicles, is there still a button to press (or maybe a sensor to detect people waiting) so pedestrians don’t have to wait until there’s a break in the traffic? If so, how promptly does it respond? If it doesn’t respond promptly, it’s not really a benefit; after all, a green man when there’s no traffic anyway doesn’t really allow you to do anything you couldn’t before.

Ed: I’d somehow missed the video and only read the TfL doc! So there is a button, but it’s not shown how quickly it responds. And yes, it does respond quickly to vehicles and also stays red for people a couple of secs after the last vehicle has passed.

[brooksby]

There are comments on the

There are comments on the Bristol Post about this along the lines of how pedestrians only ever have to wait a few seconds so why change anything.

Clearly comments made by people who almost never pedestrianise around the city centre… 

[chrisonabike]

That looks good – does it
That looks good – does it reliably detect cyclists though?

Minor quibble – it seems quite keen to let cars through. But given the whole concept is just so mind-blowing for the UK (some places barely have footways) I think that can be deferred.

[Tom_77]

slc wrote:

slc wrote:

Why stop there ? How about the crossings remaining green for pedestrians until a vehicle pulls up at the lights and waits 30 seconds? I guess it would be annoying on the bike but I reckon I could cope.

London has some crossings like that – New TfL data shows success of innovative ‘pedestrian priority’ traffic signals

There’s a YouTube video showing one in action.

[Davisian]

I don’t know why this is in
I don’t know why this is in the news, the Merseyside area is peppered with crossings that work like this and have done for decades. Maybe we don’t blow our own trumpet eh😏?
On a serious note though, it’s good to see this system of crossings is finally rolling out across the UK 👍🏻

[slc]

Is there a theory of

Is there a theory of pedestrian crossing induced demand? Perhaps we should put little bollards halfway way across, so the crossers are as cross as the already cross. 

[mdavidford]

This is going to give cross

This is going to give cross people something else to hang their crossness on.

[chrisonabike]

“Continuous Green for

“Continuous Green for cyclists / active travel” signals exist in NL.  Not common yet, but e.g. Delft has some.  Haarlem already a good job using smart lights on its intersections but perhaps they could even do better with those?

Your idea sounds similar to another actual intervention – but this one is for making a particular route accessible to those who need but totally unappealing as a short-cut for drivers.  See here (there are some other good ideas as well).

[slc]

Why stop there ? How about
Why stop there ? How about the crossings remaining green for pedestrians until a vehicle pulls up at the lights and waits 30 seconds? I guess it would be annoying on the bike but I reckon I could cope.

[Dnnnnnn]

This is going to make some

This is going to make some people cross.

[chrisonabike]

What is the current behaviour

What is the current behaviour (I don’t know how these commonly work in the UK – I do know that often you seem to have to wait for some time…)?

I could imagine we have either “unless drivers have had at least x seconds of green, do not change signals” or “if a certain volume of traffic is detected, don’t change signals (unless y seconds have passed)”.

Conflicts over pedestrian crossing signals often make me wonder if the question should be “why do we need a signalised crossing here anywa?” Often the answer seems to be because “we are trying to combine ‘flow’ for motor vehicles with lots of pedestrians e.g. run a traffic artery / distributor through somewhere we also want to be a ‘place’ ”  So effectively the issue is we’ve allowed too many motor vehicles through here / set speed limits too high / the road is too wide.

This is very common in the UK, due to the way our roads have “evolved” and we expect them to be multifunctional.  But that ends up being inefficient for drivers and unpleasant for pedestrians.  As opposed to the kind of organisation seen eg. here.

Of course, that’s historic network-level problems and those can be several magnitudes more than 20K to fix!

[Bmblbzzz]

This is such a no-brainer it

This is such a no-brainer it really should be standard practice worldwide. But as the world is, I wonder which will be seen first; this or a train station in Portishead?

[Author]

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