Originally Posted by
sggoodri
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.
This sounds like a very accurate description of what we've dealt with here on this road I'm talking about. The thing is, the local planners acknowledge that it's a really serious problem that needs major improvement, but the implementation has been tied up for years due to lack of funding, political infighting, and NIMBYism. Ultimately, the plan is apparently to grade separate the whole arterial as a sort of parkway with ramps and overpasses at all the current intersections. But that plan will cost hundreds of millions of dollars, and so it hasn't happened despite being in the planning stages for several decades. A lot of local advocates have asked for some sort of more minor improvements along the lines of what you just suggested in the interim since the major rebuilding plan is only going to possibly happen at some indeterminate point in the future. So far, that hasn't happened, and I first heard people ask for it about 5 years ago. I've even seen a pedestrian get hit at this same intersection after they got caught in the middle when the cycle changed (why people just plow into someone in the middle when the light turns green is beyond me, but there you go). Luckily they weren't seriously injured, but it's a disaster waiting to happen.
The arterial even has sidewalks, and a fairly significant level of pedestrian traffic (there are grocery stores and other retail along with residential areas on both sides). And I got the same reasoning when I complained about the lack of safe pedestrian crossings or timings: they felt their liability would increase if they "encouraged" pedestrians to cross by putting in cross walks or pedestrian signals, and they claimed that no one would actually try to cross on foot as it is because it would be "suicidal". In other words, they claimed there was nothing they could do short of totally realigning the intersections. I know that people cross on foot quite frequently right now, but they didn't seem too convinced by my anecdotal evidence of that. It's a frustrating situation.