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City Councilman John Liu, who heads the the Council's Transportation Committee, thinks the city should install the countdown signs at traffic lights - you know, the ones that tell you how much time there is until the light changes to red. But the counterargument would be that people underestimate the time it takes to walk across the street. Is that because people think their strides are longer than they really are?
It'd be funny to see which intersections have the longest and shortest lights - we've mastered our neighborhood's traffic lights to know which streets to cross and which to avoid. And we don't want to encourage people to test their bodies against oncoming traffic, but it seems that if the light has just turned yellow, you'll probably be okay to across a regular (not, say, Houston or Park) street, whereas if it's a blinking yellow, just wait for the next light. Or are we wrong?
The Post says the city will be testing countdown timers at some intersections. And early this year, Transporation Alternatives had suggestions for the Department of Transportation to reduce pedestrian fatalities.
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Has anyone noticed you can't make it across delancy without running or starting early? They need to add some time to that crossing.
Seen these countdown signs in other places like in Rhinebeck (upstate NY).
Seems simple enough, but would it be worth the extra cost? Everyday I take a walk and see people look at the crosswalk light, see it as a Steady "Don't walk" and start regardless of cars coming at them.
Sweet, they have these countdown-style signs in some parts of Boston and they are indeed pretty helpful if you aren't sure when the little walking man first appeared.
The worse offender of a short walk signal is when you cross the Queens Blvd from the Mall towards Sears & Woodhaven.
San Francisco has the countdown lights and they are great. They will be awesome for walking through midtown.
I have seen them in DC where they seem to be automatic and Yonkers where you have to push a button to start time. I am guessing the DOT will go with the automatic type and not the pedestrian activivated ones.
John Liu = media whore.
Nobody follows the crosswalk signs anyway- everyone looks at the traffic lights. If it's still possible to cross the street, people do, and waiting for the crosswalk signs will get you railroaded. Installing more crosswalk signs is a waste of money.
What a stupid waste of money! If the city council really wants to put in countdown signals, they ought to put it where it'd be useful -in the SUBWAYS!!!! European cities have this and they're an enormous deterent to slitting your wrists while waiting in oblivion for a train. Seriously...I hate the black hole that is waiting for the trains in NYC!!!
Why do we need this, 98% of people in this city jay walk anyway...i second adam's comment, countdown in subways!
Countdowns for the subway have been in the works for years... L will go online in July (that's what all those digital displays in L stations are for, not just fancy clocks), numbered lines going online starting this fall, lettered lines, um, 2009.
How about a countdown clock at the shuttle stations at Times Square and Grand Central. Right now, everyone just starts running whenever there's a train sitting there. This would be so easy and cheap it boggles my mind it wasn't done years ago.
Why waste even more space on an additional timer? Integrate it into the walk signal. Just have it start flashing slowly (at its current rate) and flash faster and faster until it becomes constant when the light changes to yellow. Numbers don't mean that much to the human brain, they're easy to tune out. But quickly flashing lights get attention. That's why there have been several attempts to put flashing brake lights on cars over the years, although the government refused to allow them.
Brightliner: the countdown timers I've seen simply overlay the walking man and the hand, and use the space where the walking man is for the numbers instead (ie, the signals are the same size).
Brightliner wants us all to get epileptic seizures!
Why do people pay attention to crossing signs? A sign will not kill you if you disobey it, but traffic is not so forgiving. Why not just look both ways like your mother taught you? Isn't that safer in the end than trusting the light on the pole, even if that light is smart enough to tell you you have 10 seconds left.
They cost more, but make up the savings in diminished electricity costs.
From San Francisco's DOT Ped Program:
San Francisco
"Cities face major financial incentives to replace existing traffic and pedestrian signals with more energy-efficient LED (Light Emitting Diode) versions. Since there are LED countdown signals available, this presents an opportunity to change to countdown signals at many or most signalized intersections with no incremental cost. In fact, the incremental cost is roughly $1,000 per intersection ($130 per signal head) for countdown versus conventional LED pedestrian signals."
From Social Design Notes:
Start Running Now
"Local studies around the U.S. are finding that the countdown signals come at a price. While the countdown reduces the number of pedestrians who start running when the flashing DON’T WALK signal appears, the countdown seems to be interpreted to mean that it is OK to cross the street if there are enough seconds on the clock. Pedestrians are more likely to start crossing the street during the countdown than during the flashing DON’T WALK. This is contrary to the intent of the designers, and of the law."
From the Manual on Uniform Traffic Control Devices
Countdown Timers
Completely pointless.
The countdown will be useless to young people, who move faster, and so they'll continue to take risks with lives, in front of stoopid drivers.
Older people will feel rushed off their feet.
And everyone will continue to look at the light the traffic sees to know if they have a chance to cross.
I'm for realism. If the countdown showed you how many seconds until the traffic gets a green light you'd be able to judge for yourself. Imagine the city treating you like an intelligent human. Yeah, right.
one more vote from me for countdown timers in the subway...
I still stand by the assertion that increasing flash rate increases the feeling of urgency, and so do many human factors engineers. As for the post from "Strobe," if you really think simple flashing lights will give everyone seizures, you're very ignorant.
What they need to do is put in longer green lights at intersections instead of a counter. On Northern Blvd in fab Flushing, the cars are the unrivaled rulers, since a pedestrian has to wait about a minute and a half for the Man and then has about 10 seconds before the Hand starts flashing.
www.forgotten-ny.com
The lawyers can't wait for these. Picture this. 2 12 year old boys, one says to the other, I bet you you cant cross queens blvd when the counter gets to 3 seconds. Splat. Lawsuit against the city.
Counters are a great idea. Wash DC has them. But in NY, as usual the lawyers will ruin it or at least make us all pay.
The subway timers would be nice and I'm looking forward to them on the L, but are they going to change anything about the service? Will they make the trains come more often? Yeah, it's annoying to be on a platform when the train feels like it's taking forever, but it's not like I'm going to waste my fare by exiting the station if the train is 15 minutes away. It would be helpful during rush hour when the arriving train is packed and you know how long until the next one, but will they show that before you have to decide whether or not to squeeze on?
The crosswalk counters serve a more important purpose, even if a majority of people won't use them. The subway timers aren't going to help keep an old woman (or young man, don't want to stereotype) from getting blindsided by a bus. The only time I pay attention to the crosswalk signs is when I'm driving down 2nd ave. and I want to know if the yellow lights are catching up to me. But even I think the counters would be helpful on really wide streets.
I think if there were a timer, people would be even more confused: now, does it count down to when the traffic light turns green, or when they ideally want me to stop before I cross? Sure, it may seem like there's no difference between the two, but people now walk toward the little red man, blinking or not. Bottom line, there ain't no way to control how these New Yorkers be walkin'.