Road design, safety and Vision Zero

[dtkvictim]

2) I'm pretty sure the Gaukel crossing over Charles St has been replaced with a beg button, and gives an otherwise permanent green to traffic on Charles St. I just watched it for 2.5 minutes and the light never cycled, while about 20 people (none of whom pressed the button) decided to wait for a few seconds each and then just cross since there was no traffic. Maybe someone who lives in Charlie West or uses this crossing often can confirm.

Do people really not understand that they won’t get a green if they don’t press the button? I regularly observe this on King at the Waterloo Spur. Now, to be clear, I don’t object to people crossing against a red hand when there is no conflicting traffic and I sometimes do it myself, but I don’t understand how people don’t understand that the button is required in order to get a walking person.

Of course, regular readers here will know that I think many of these should be reversed to be permanently green for pedestrians, until vehicle traffic activates the light using sensors in the road.

Well, for years, even after being pedestrianized, you didn't have to press the button and now you suddenly do (assuming I'm not wrong about what I saw). Additionally, most intersections in downtown Kitchener don't need to be pressed, this is now an exception to that presumably because they don't consider it an intersection anymore. If you pay attention you can figure out which ones actually change the light, and which ones just play a noise when the light changes, but the design language isn't very good.

This change is even more annoying for cyclists who will cross from pedestrian street to pedestrian street, rather than from the sidewalk. Now they have no way to activate the light without dismounting and walking up on to the sidewalk to press the button.

The spur line crossing on King is a little more intuitive since it functions more like a PXO, but given the volume of pedestrian traffic there it would also be reasonable to assume it operates on a cycle. Or maybe they just think someone else has already pressed it, since there is often a crowd waiting to cross. Side note, the uptown intersections like Willis Way and King that require the button to pressed to get a walk sign when the lights already operate on a cycle is insane... There are always people waiting to cross.

Edit: And to protect myself from looking like an idiot, this is just what I think I saw. But if it is still operating on a cycle (albeit an extremely long one) then they've changed the button design language again...