Originally Posted by
mnemia
I agree that waiting in the center of the lane in the traffic stream helps, but many places similar to what the OP describes are indeed very problematic. I regularly cross a road that is 8 lanes wide + 2 center turn lanes + grassy median. And the green cycle on the cross streets is VERY short, with no pedestrian improvements or signals at all. From a standstill at the front of the lineup of cars, I can just barely clear the intersection before it hits red if I accelerate all-out.
This traffic signal violates MUTCD timing requirements for pedestrians. If there's no ped head, then the green plus yellow time is supposed to be adjusted long enough for pedestrians to cross the intersection safely before the other traffic gets a green.
Lots of DOTs violate this requirement, even in places where there is significant pedestrian volume. However, they make themselves liable to a lawsuit if there is a pedestrian collision due to inadequate time. One such collision in Durham, NC motivated me to start serious advocacy work for pedestrians about 12 years ago. Most of the places I've seen the timing requirement violated are roads with no sidewalks, although there are oftent pedestrian trip generators on both sides of the road. Other places there may be sidewalks. Regardless, if pedestrians may cross the road, the engineers are supposed to comply with MUTCD, and are guilty of professional neglect if they do not.
Since traffic engineers often do not want to delay arterial traffic for such a long time when there is no pedestrian present, they usually employ ped detectors and only provide the ped signal with clearance interval when the button is pressed. Usually the only resistance to this by the engineers is money. But I've seen NCDOT refuse to do this even when the city offered to pay, because the NCDOT engineer didn't want to provide safe timing for pedestrians even when they were detected, and believed that not providing the signal would discourage pedestrians from crossing, which would be good for motorists on the arterial. Needless to say, such engineers get a real earful from me.
Note that activating a pedestrian signal increases the green time for vehicular traffic on the side street. It may not be possible to activate the ped signal and then get back in line with traffic, but sometimes a ped signal is the only way to stop arterial traffic long enough to cross safely.
There are a number of sensor configurations and signal settings that can be used to detect the length of the queue at cross streets and provide a longer green time for vehicle traffic as required. California has been studying ways to automatically detect the speed that vehicles clear intersections, or to detect bicycles specifically, to ensure adequate clearance time. Again, the lack of deployment of solutions mostly about money.