The Insane Ways Traffic Engineers Try to Make Streets "Safe" For Walking
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- čas přidán 29. 08. 2023
- RRFBs. HAWK signals. Do any of these devices actually do what they're supposed to do, and how do traffic engineers decide when and where to install them?
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Previous CityNerd Videos Referenced:
- CityVisit: Charlotte: • I Visited the World Ca...
- CityVisit: Minneapolis: • What the Twin Cities D...
- CityVisit: Miami: • Miami: Ultra-Livable P...
- The Stroad Ecosystem: • The Stroad: A Case Stu...
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Resources:
- NCHRP Report: nacto.org/wp-content/uploads/...
- RRFB research: highways.dot.gov/safety/prove...
- highways.dot.gov/sites/fhwa.d...
- New Mexico law: law.justia.com/codes/new-mexi...
- Mayor Keller and other city officials announcing new safety countermeasures near Albuquerque schools: • School Crosswalk Impro...
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I saw someone refer to a saying "You don't build a bridge over a river based on the number of people swimming across it". And it definitely something people and traffic engineers seem to ignore in regards to bikes and pedestrians. Of course people rarely walk or cross a loud and dangerous 6 lane stroad, and no one bikes down it
@@michaelkalus7802 That is so short sighted as even drivers are pedestrians sometimes too!
@@deirdre108 Depending on where you live in North America you may very well walk from your door to your driveway, then from the parking lot to the office / store. So they never experience anything but "traffic calmed" areas.
The other argument I often see is that people chose to drive because it "gets them where they want to go" and "it's the most comfortable way". Dunno, but I find city driving not even remotely relaxing. I rather ride a bike, sit on a bus / train or even walk. But again, if sitting in a car is all you know.....
for most drivers, the entirety of their pedestrian experience is walking between the car and the front door
@@michaelkalus7802 Fish not perceiving the water in which they swim
The cyclists do it in Chicago. There's all these bikes spray painted white with flowers and pictures on them, chained to fences and light poles, I wonder what those are about...
banana peels on roads to deter drivers
Equip all pedestrians with blue shells
Nay, caltrops
Rainbow road music is effective traffic calming don't let anyone tell you otherwise
…but then they will just slide onto the sidewalk.
It'sa Mario!
CityNerd warning about "mild sarcasm" is like water warning about "mild wetness".
With his level of sarcasm, I wouldn't be shocked if city nerd is a carbrain talking about urbanism in second degree sarcasm.
I dunno, I can be a little flip about things that are deadly serious, just trying to check that somehow
This takes me back to grad school and an urban design department party where everyone would try to sound suave saying “so… are you a… planner?” And it was remarkably similar in tone.
It's what draws me in to watch. The sarcasm is definitely dry. Love it!
@@mohamedaminekoubaa5231😂
Surprised there’s no mention of the super wild tactic in some ( mostly tourist) cities of having a basket of flags at either end of the crosswalk and having pedestrians waving them around as they cross.
I have seen that in a few places in Washington state. Wild is right.
Can cover in my SLC cityvisit haha
I only saw someone take the flag once and I cracked up so hard I had to stop.
You can't help but laugh at the orange flags, whether you are a driver or a pedestrian. My experience was Redmond WA
@@CityNerd oh god, they're everywhere here. Juxtaposed by actually good implements like the recent road diet along 900 South, the 300 South project, and the 20 Is Plenty campaign. Urban Utah has a LOT of wide intersections with crosswalks and no refuge islands or anything; including hundreds owned by the DOT. We should do something to rehabilitate those in the meantime; maybe that means a mandatory center pedestrian refuge island if crosswalk width hits a certain threshold. Here's a good intersection: 700 East and 3300 South. 9 lanes and 110ft wide, posted 45mph speed limit, good luck, pedestrians; courtesy of the DOT.
"How many people are trying to swim across the river before we build a bridge"
Amazing analogy
@@proot.not really cuz the bridge already exists for cars but there are no sidewalks
@@realadrieno in the analogy the river is the road and the bridge is the crosswalk. Using the amount of pedestrian crossings as justification to add a crosswalk is flawed because pedestrians will avoid crossing an unsafe road, just like people will avoid swimming to cross a river.
@@realadrieno The river already exists for boats.
I'm still amazed to what length traffic "engineers" go to do anything but build safe infrastructure.
In Rome, when they build a new arch, the engineer had to stand under it as they took the supports away. Maybe we should force all traffic engineers to keep crossing / cycling the roads they design.
This is such a simple but brilliant idea. When the project is complete we should get live demonstrations on how to use them during peak traffic times. And it should be widely reported on.
Yes please! Also every city council member.
Depends on the City but often the transportation engineering staff has a higher bike commute percentage than the general population. I biked to work for years, too bad I couldn't bill the time as user experience design.
My local government has competent engineers and politicians who ignore engineers. There are layers to the issue.
@@SnakebitSTI That's such a shame, and it was even touched on in the video. From the city's perspective it seems that it's better not to even pretend to try, because then it's "blame the scofflaw jaywalker" instead of "city at fault when motorist didn't see the 15,000 blinking yellow lights telling them to stop".
Fearing for my life as a pedestrian is the only thing that gets me through the day to be honest. If the prospect of my immediate death wasn't constantly enforced by poor road design I simply don't know how I would live a meaningful life.
I love opening my window each afternoon and smelling the refreshing scent of smog and trailer exhaust.
@@BalaenicepsRex3 Then move.
@@jamesl.1890 How about we made our cities better?
Movw where??
Me as a scooter rider!😂😂😂😂
As a roadway engineer who has specified these things myself (as well as other PSAP applications), I have to wonder how long it'll take before we reach saturation and all this fluorescent yellow signage just fades back into the background like the original yellow/orange signage did.
Precisely why we need more level crossings, lower speed limits, road diets, and traffic calming. These things are just silly. The HAWKs in my city confuse the hell out of everyone and stay red long enough that I think they're unpopular and won't be widely adopted. Just gotta change the streets themselves.
I’m not sure that it will ever stop being effective just because it stops being novel. Afterall, stoplights are all over the place but they still get the majority of the people to stop in the correct locations at the correct times.
I’m more concerned that this method is just turning into a cop-out solution which cities use in order to justify not creating truly pedestrian friendly infrastructure.
@@SaveMoneySavethePlanet There's definitely some truth to that.
I'm sure we'll see cities stop using the cop-outs just as soon as we start having highway projects justified by how long they take to turn a profit. To say nothing about how badly obfuscated all the costs of all this infrastructure really is.
Should be any day now...
I'd say it's already saturated. Especially where they are flashing continuously rather than being triggered by a crossing user.
"Signs are not infrastructure," etc., etc.
the biggest thing my hometown has done is to actually enforce pedestrian crossing rules, including having an "education operation" periodically, where a "decoy pedestrian" attempts to cross the road, and police pull people over who don't stop. the RRFBs basically take away the "I didn't know he wanted to cross" defense.
Just wait until a 16 years old driving a f250 trying to roll coal on pedestrian and accident hitting them.
This is the only solution. Police departments realizing that failure to yield is another bountiful source of ticket revenue is the only plausible solution within current US politics.
Technically passing a driver's license test is supposed to invalidate that defense already. Having to go through the written exam every time when paying license renewal might shake the gasoline brain fog for at least a week or two per year, to be periodically refreshed with crosswalk ticket traps. It's a win win win for pedestrians, police and municipalities.
I love this!
But unfortunately since enforcing ROW laws and keeping pedestrians safe don’t seem like normal priorities for most police departments, all a special campaign like this will do is “educate” drivers how unlikely they are to ever get penalized for not yielding to pedestrians
I experience a lot of awkward crossings on my bike rides. Most of the greenways in my city inevitably intersect roads at several points, and have various types of crosswalks. There’s always this weird standoff between myself and the cars, because you never know when someone is going to *actually* yield.
I had an incredibly frustrating experience with this when I was living in Atlanta.
I was on a gravel trail that intersects with another street. As I approached the crosswalk, I see a few cars coming to my left so I stop and wait for them to pass. The car in the front of the line slows down to a stop and waves me across.
As I mount my bike and start pedaling into the crosswalk, I hear an engine accelerating towards me. I look again to my left and see *a police officer illegally passing the line of cars in the oncoming lane, with no lights or sirens on.* He slams on his brakes and does the little “woop woop” thing with his siren and *so graciously lets me cross the crosswalk,* then angrily speeds off.
How the hell am I supposed to feel safe in a crosswalk if the people who are supposed to *enforce the yielding laws* are completely ignoring them in, arguably, the most illegal way possible?
There's a Multi-Use Path that I frequently use for cycling, part of which is a relatively large park with tennis courts, playgrounds, and a golf course. The MUP crosses the 15MPH street that serves the park ~100 yards from the major feeder road. EVEN HERE there's a stop sign for path users, and NO stop sign for incoming cars!
@@joelv4495oh I ignore those. They don't actually exist.
I've recently just stopped crossing in situations like that. One driver yields but there's clearly dangerous traffic in the other lanes? Just don't cross. I feel much safer if I let the cars go and I wait for a gap in traffic.
Cops spend all day sitting in their car, engine idling, no one should be surprised they are the most afflicted and least aware they have car brain.
I love how their own research shows that you only need to cross the road an average of 50 times before you die
Don’t be dramatic. You might just get maimed.
Imagine 100 people playing road crossing battle royale. On average 228 will be needed to find winner
Formula:
1 = 100 * (0.98) ^ x
0.01 = 0.98 ^ x
x = log 0.98 (0.01)
x ~ 227.948171184
In case people take the comment seriously, 98% compliance and 1/50 don't stop means most pedestrians don't cross until seeing oncoming vehicles actually stop. If not all all oncoming lanes have a vehicle stopped, most pedestrians as they cross keep looking so they can react in case a law-breaker is driving through.
Or in other words, your kid can make it to their 5th week of kindergarten.
@@jmontg17the expected value of their kindergarten injury-free survival would be 2-1/2 weeks actually under the humorous take on the circumstances.
But what the study was saying was about 98% of the vehicles following the law and yielding. Which is an important but fortunately very different event from the pedestrian noticing that they haven't followed the law and not crossing as expected because of it.
Many times have I fantasized about railroad-style gates for double-lane crossings and lane gates for right turn lanes that parallel a bike / ped path. It seems like the physical danger of smashing through a gate is the only thing that would actually stop all drivers from turning right when they're not supposed to. Also, flip the script and prohibit all right turns on red in general, and then post signs where they are allowed. Barely anybody pays attention to signs prohibiting right turns on red. That's where I experience the most conflicts.
Honestly there is a method to the "madness" of prohibiting right-on-red. Right-on-red is prohibited on pretty much the entire island of Montreal, and it works pretty well there. Combine that with pedestrian crossing starting before the green light for traffic, and you don't feel like you have to babysit every right-turning driver into not killing you.
I used to like right on red when I was more car brained a decade ago. Now, I'm not sure they should have any place in urban areas.
Yes, drivers turning right on red usually have their heads turned towards oncoming traffic and don't even bother looking out for pedestrians or noticing if the walk signal has turned on. You would have to ban it throughout the whole city though and actually enforce it, as my experience is that if it is illegal at only certain lights drivers will just do it anyway
@@thatoneotherotherguy isn't Right on Red illegal by default everywhere in Quebec
@@jasonriddell I haven't been to Quebec in four years, but IIRC, last time I was there, it was ONLY the island of Montreal that prohibited right on red. The bridges driving onto the island had big signs warning you of that. I recall making right-on-reds pretty much anywhere else in the province. A local can quote me if I'm wrong.
crazy how we have gates like that to save people in steel machines from 2 lanes of bigger stronger steel machines but not to save pedestrians from 6 lanes of steel machines
Several years ago I realised that roads are analogous to walls, where the more lanes you have the higher the wall is. It only takes about 2 lanes in either direction until the "wall" is too high to climb over.
I’m actually working on a real world analysis of these solutions in Los Angeles!
I commonly hear that LA isn’t doing a good job because we’ve had “Vision Zero” since 2015 and pedestrian injuries have only increased. So I’m in the middle of paying the city for loads of data surrounding a smattering of different projects which were done in the name of pedestrian safety!
Hopefully I’m able to prove your point with some real numbers! Literally can’t wait to get my hands on that data…
Y'all have to pay the cities to have access to that data? Shouldn't that be public information?
@@jeanschyso normally my requests are free, but they’re charging me for this one. Maybe I asked for data which isn’t already digitized so they couldn’t just manipulate a spreadsheet and send it over or something?
The charge is $0.10/sheet so I’m assuming it’s just to cover the cost of copying hard sheets of paper.
That’s part of why I’m curious what the data will look like when I receive it…hopefully it answers why I’m being charged.
@@jeanschyso
In GA, you have to pay for your own digital medical record.
And you are not legally allowed to reproduce it.
Seems like good work. I live in greater LA and my impression is they haven't actually implemented many of the vision zero / safe streets / complete streets etc proposals, whatever they are calling them now.
To be fair, basically everywhere has had injuries go up since COVID started, which I assume is from a multitude of factors such as general stress, people are poorer and probbaly can't upkeep their cars as well, the ever growing car sizes, etc. I've also (anecdotally) seen a large increase in people biking around LA so maybe there's just more people outside of a car.
For $5 I was wondering if I could hear your view on Missouri’s “improving 1-70 project”? I-70 is a 2 lane interstate and it’s certainly the most congested non-metro area highway. Their solution among interchange “improvements” (we know how those go) is to add a 3rd lane in each direction. This project has already funded $2.8B from the state and more grants are on the way. In my research it comes out to $14m per highway mile. Compared to brightline’s $7.5-12m per mile cost (and ability to generate revenue) it seems like a colossally bad investment.
I should go dig up the studies from Vancouver-Seattle-Portland high speed rail. I think they actually do a cost comparison of how much it would cost to replicate all the capacity HSR would provide by either (a) expanding I-5 and/or (b) expanding airports/adding runways. If I remember it makes the HSR investment look quite a bit better, and that's not even counting the climate change benefits etc.
@@CityNerd they have a public comment form. I submitted my take, not sure what kind of response I’ll get for it. There are also meetings throughout this week in the towns along I-70. Hopefully some city nerd fans will show
After some deadly accidents, city of Helsinki has decided to put traffic lights on every pedestrian crossing that has more than two car lanes. To implement this it will take some time, but I think it's a great improvement
After some deadly accidents, most places in America approved plans to widen the stroads and increase the speed limits.
Man, what a different world we lived in.
I think I’d question the existence of stroads that exceed two car lanes if installing signals that cost tens of thousands of dollars each are determined appropriate. Have you ever been on a road with signals closer than 1/4 mile? It’s overwhelming & confusing at times
Hopefully more cities follow in their model, I don't even feel uncomfortable crossing a 7 lane boulevard if the traffic light actually has a cycle dedicated to pedestrian crossing. Unfortunately most in my city give left turns the green light when pedestrians are also given the signal, cars are expected to yield even though they have the green which leads to confusion and people getting mad at pedestrians thinking they weren't paying attention or that they were purposely stepping out in front of them when in really they are only following instructions.
@@jintsuubest9331 joy goes to the NIMBY
@@ttoperowhy would having traffic lights somewhat close together be overwhelming? Annoying and possibly slow I get, but overwhelming? My neighborhoods main throughfare, which is also a federal highway, has 6 signals within 0.8 miles, one of them a pedestrian only crossing and it’s completely fine. If it’s green you go, if it’s red you stop. Nothing complicated about it.
I could think of dozen examples in my city alone where there are traffic signals much closer then 1/4 mile apart. What else are you going to at an intersection with a high traffic road and no space for a roundabout?
The fact that school zone speed limits only exist for like an hour a day completely ignores the reality that children exist 24/7. If nothing else, schools are often adjacent to or come with parks, which means that children may be coming or going all throughout the afternoon, not just the 5 minutes after school gets out. It's like we expect them to go straight home and stay inside the rest of the day. Then we wonder why kids never go outside...
In California, the school zone applies when any children are present regardless of day or time and every single one of the signs says that right on the sign. So not every state limits the timing.
@@matthewhall5571 by the time a driver has read the sign it would already be too late to slow down
Yeah, that's weird. Here in Scandinavia where I live the equivalent lower speed sign for school children last from 7am to 4pm. And such crossings are often built with speed-bumps or dramatic narrowing of the road. And on bigger streets normal traffic lights. But then again we don't have stroads, if there is a major busy road or highway nearby a school there is usually an underpass for pedestrians and cyclists to cross that road.
I was in Poland recently and I noticed that crosswalks and other pedestrian & cycling infrastructure 100% seems to get the right-away there. This is so important to drivers there that even taxi and uber drivers that I rode with are actually slowing way down when approaching empty cross walks in case a pedestrian steps out into the roadway.
That has as much to do with the legal landscape as the actual road design. In the USA pedestrians and cyclists are treated as second-class citizens both in road design and the victim-blaming culture after an incident.
For sure. In krakow cars slam brakes if there is even a pedestrian near a crosswalk
Very tangential to what you are talking about, but I was wondering if there is a potential "Egg-Corn" (a word or phrase that results from a mishearing or misinterpretation of another) in your comment. I was always under the impression that the term was "right of way", as in "That car has the 'right' (permission to drive ahead at an intersection) of the 'way' (the road)". If it is actually "right away" then my mind would be blown
@@MrKurbekIt is in fact right of way. I think was City Beautiful who made a video in which he gives some of the history of the Right of Way. Interesting how far we have bastardized this "right" with car centric planning.
@@MrKurbek"Right away" is very much an eggcorn, in this case.
These blinky lights for crosswalks are great, because they take driver's awareness from a general "look out for pedestrians" to a specific "look here now for pedestrians". Like difference between a Captain announcing "we have begun final descent, fasten your seatbelts" and the airline sending you annual postcard reminding you to fasten your seatbelt.
Having grown up in North America (and being very familiar w/ stroads and flashy lights), walking around in the Nordic countries was a shock. Even if I just looked like I wanted to cross the street, everyone stopped, even if I was in the middle of the block. (I actually crossed the street twice out of embarrassment, when all I had been doing was looking at a building on the other side of the street :P) No fancy lights required. I'm sure it's a combination of factors (different laws, different urban design, a less sociopathic cultural zeitgeist) but it was such a revelation that blinky lights are not a requirement and that driver hostility is not an inherent quality of the universe.
It's the same here in Australia. It's HIGHLY illegal to NOT STOP for pedestrians at pedestrian crossings. Everyone driving keeps a look out at crossing and stops. It's much safer and just a good idea. Your considered a dangerous lunatic if you ignore crossings.
lmao that hilarious, adorable and relatable. Ive never been out of the us but Id probably do the same thing 🤣 like "Is this what you wanted? I crossed 😬"
Regarding the pedestrian being taken out by somebody in the second lane over: The idea that they'll get a ticket is rooted in the belief that the driver will stick around to take responsibility for what they've done. There's a very good chance they won't.
I'd love to see a study of per capita pedestrian and cyclist hit and runs by metro areas. I believe the Denver region would place very high.
@@ccaudi
Tbf, Denver is not a metro area, it is just giant parking lot with some building and stroads sprinkled in between.
I still remember a night when my mother, a nurse, witnessed a hit and run on an elderly woman at a major stroad near our house. Not only did she administer CPR on a dead, broken body until the paramedics arrived, but also had to witness the husband coming out to look for his wife because she'd been gone for so long. She works in senior assisted living, so she's around death a lot, but that one stuck with her for a VERY long time, and I can't begin to imagine what the husband went through.
The only silver lining is that they caught the guy and his ass went to prison.
That first one with 6 lanes with pedestrians protected by paint is insane. About 20 years ago, NSW, Australia, removed all unprotected crossings from all roads with more than one lane in each direction.
As someone who is car-less in the sprawling LA suburb of Torrance, I hold my breath whenever I have to cross the 8-lane stroad adjacent to my hood so I can get to Trader Joes. I've decided that putting my faith in both the crosswalk and cars to obey my green-lit pedestrian walk signal is foolhardy. So now I press the button because I like the illusion of control and just use my best judgement to cross, whether I have the go-ahead or not. It's absurd that you have a neighborhood with approx 1000 homes and those people would have to risk their lives to walk to the massive shopping center across the street! So most people don't. Except this gal.
Then again, Trader Joe's is a very good supermarket, so...
@@massvt3821 Yes, I regularly risk my life for Thai chili & lime cashews!
Correction: I just checked, I actually have to cross TEN lanes in approx 30 seconds, if you count the left turn lanes.🤦
Perhaps the management of that TJ's would be willing to ask the city for an improved pedestrian crossing there for "business" purposes? It might be worth a conversation with the manager.
@@julietardos5044 Maybe I’ll email them, thanks! It’s an enormous center, w a Walmart, 2 gyms, Marshals, many storefronts. The way it’s laid out, I don’t think they want to encourage pedestrians even though the parking lots are pure mayhem.
I’d love to see a video on the “fake” urbanization of a city like Irvine, CA. It’s a city known for its safeness and walking/biking trails accompanying every neighborhood. But it’s a public transportation nightmare as well as being the model for suburban life.
Carmel, Indiana also comes to mind here. They have a lot of walking and bike infrastructure and dense development, but little in the way of public transit. I think there is a general attitude in wealthy places in the US that “everyone has cars why do we need transit?
fellow Irvine dweller here who works at the Spectrum mall, talk about the pent-up demand for "walkable" places as demonstrated by the hellish crowds in that place
I take the Walnut bike trail on my commute and the way it spits you back out onto Sand Canyon into painted bike lines next to 50+mph traffic makes me chuckle each time
granted I ride a "road legal" ebike with the traffic so I don't deal with the death trap bike lanes but it freaks me out watching the kids ride their bikes home from school in the narrow sidewalks along Culver between Walnut and Deerfield
@@nickwannnI recommend using the "sidewalk" on Sand Canyon. It's actually 11 feet wide and classified as a multiuse path. Much better than biking I'm traffic
@@nickwannn I honestly can’t believe parents let their kids ride 2 to a bike on those things in traffic going 30+. It irks me every time
Public Transport = Minorities = Lower Property Values.
If you ask a traditional transportation planner where to build a pedestrian bridge across a river, based on the tools they know and are familiar with, the first step is to count the number of people swimming across the river at that location, so see if there is demand for a bridge.
My small-ish town installed a couple of those RRFB on a pretty busy 4 lane highway a year ago and almost no one stops due to how fast everyone is going, unless there’s more than a couple of kids wanting to cross after school. More importantly, there’s been a handful of times where the lights are ‘broken’ and will blink non-stop for a day or two and again, so no one stops because there is clearly no one crossing.
Oh yeah, the HAWK on my route has gone haywire sometimes and it raises my blood pressure cause man, I just really hope no one gets hit that day
There's a couple Hawks on the non-highway route I sometimes take to work. Now the speed limit in that small section of the stroad is 25 (heaven forbid most anyone actually go that slow unless density of traffic forces it)...but they are actually somewhat beneficial when traffic IS going close to that cause it reminds drivers who get high-focused on other vehicles and forget about non--vehicle things that this is a town-center area and people WILL be walking across the road.
Your Mariachis de Nuevo México polo was the cherry on top of this awesome video **chef's kiss**
My favorite is all the suburbanites with “drive like your kids live here” signs in their yard who speed through every curl-de-sac and crosswalk that’s not directly in front of their house.
As soon as you said "6 lane crossing", my heart dropped. Not even an island or traffic light timing to sneak through!
I'm in the EU so when i get too scared to tackle a junction on my bike, i can just use the crossing and everyone gives way.
I've seen pretty much every video you and other urbanists have put out, but as a British person, the North American approach to literally everything you covered here still blows my mind. I don't even know where to start commenting on the amount of insane decisions that have created this mess.
Glad to see the video includes talk about double threat. It was a topic of conversation amongst my friends recently due to a death caused by one in the news. It's something I think about when driving past uncontrolled crosswalks and to be honest it makes me not want to yield when pedestrians are waiting for the road to be clear because I am afraid of the possibility.
One thing you could do (at least assuming there are only two lanes on your direction), is take the outer lane, and THEN stop.
Or take both lanes, riding the divider line
Also, you can stop about 2 car lengths further from the crosswalk for every lane the road has in your direction
Oregon's crosswalks have a solid line of where cars should stop to yield at marked crosswalks and it's REALLY far back
Handbrake stop across both lanes sideways. It's the safest way.
The fact that school zones don't have a permanent speed limit of 15~20mph is crazy to my swedish brain.
what's so crazy about only having a speed limit active when it is needed?
addendum: to clarify, part time school speed limits are in force whenever children are at the school.
@@kenbrown2808kids cross during non school hours too...
Also, a permanent reduction in speed allows you to actually put infrastructure in place to make drivers go slow, like narrowing the road. Can't do it if it's temporary, which will tempt people into speeding ... "if it's temporary, it can't be that important".
@@john-ic9vj and in those locations, there are often full time school zones.
Just think of it this way: whenever an American asks "what about the children?" they are really asking "what about the child sacrifice?"
Here in LA I’ve seen crosswalks that literally have flags for pedestrians to wave which is uh insane
truly a symptom of car-brained politicians.
Too many people crossing one direction. No flags left. Guess I'll die then.
Very common in SLC
White flags for surrender, right?
@@a2b8888 and absurd. At least SLC is making better moves in other areas. Some really good road diets happening. 900 South has recently been transformed. Kill the car sewer.
These crossings are literally designed like Frogger! Those 70s planners were definitely ahead of the curve on some things. Also inspiring the next generation and the wonderful little game of Crossy Road. Too bad we have to live it irl though. 😬
when you realise frogger is teaching vital real life survival skills.
One of the cities I used to live in had a median refuge island that was.... 3ft wide. Literally shoulder length wide with traffic flying past you at 40MPH just inches away.
It was terrifying.
Apparently walking around with a brick in your outstretched arm really slows cars down. Just a thought.
"Isn't the very existence of school speed zones a bald admission that crossing these streets is basically impossible?" I've been having this thought for a while now, especially regarding safety. We know we have to force people to drive 15-20 mph tops and have crossing guards to make streets safe enough for kids but then turn around and accept pedestrians having to contend with 35-40 mph speeds. The cognitive dissonance is massive.
No, the pedestrians are to blame. But it's bad optics to drive over children, even if they deserve capital punishment for their incompatibility with cars.
Or at the very least …that it isn’t exactly safe to cross.
That hawk acronym is wild
And not the least bit helpful. I can only remember what two of the letter mean: WalK.
My biggest concern with using them is that I can’t tell when they’ve been activated in many cases because the lights are perpendicular to me & no indication has been provided for the user. Some places set them up for instantaneous activation while some have a delay. & when they’re disabled in the constant flashing mode as one at my local grocer does occasionally, steerers just learn to ignore them, to our peril.
I definitely prefer the traditional red and green light controls at crosswalks. They're unambiguous and universally understandable, and could be combined with red-light cameras to deter motorists from blowing through them. I imagine the RRFBs are cheaper to install than a traditional traffic light, but they actually _took out a red-green light_ to install them at one crossing in my city, which is near an elementary school, a park, and on a major bike trail. Luckily, it's on a minor arterial where the 35 mph limit is generally obeyed, with only 1 traffic lane in each direction + a center shared left-turn lane. I drive by it every day to reach my current worksite, and I'm perfectly willing to stop for people crossing it who hit the button. However, I'm probably not going to stop for people standing around it who may or may not be crossing, because I don't want to get rear-ended.
Side story: my old high school is on a residential street, near an intersection with a minor arterial like the one described above. It used to have a red/green pedestrian signal on the arterial at the intersection. But sometimes car traffic to/from the school trying to cross it would get so bad that passengers in cars would get out and press the button to turn the light red, essentially using the pedestrian/cyclist crossing signal to facilitate car crossings. Some years after I graduated, the city removed the crosswalk stoplight and installed a standard 4-way traffic signal.
When my daughter attended University of Miami in Coral Gables, the students were warned never to cross US 1 on foot. Even at designated cross walks and stop lights, fatalities happened. So much for drivers yielding the right of way. My home town of Ashland, VA recently added several RRFBs. Now, the universal town posted speed limit is 25 MPH. There is one major east-west highway, VA 52, which gets a lot of traffic, especially in mornings and afternoons. Having a lower speed limit does help with drivers yielding when someone pushes the button. It also helps that VA 52 is a two lane road.
Seems like overkill for Ashland, but not going to hurt! I don't remember how many lights there are.
Yeah I think I heard that was one of the driving motivations behind the big ped bridge at the University metrorail station
@@josephfisher426 After US 1, there are none on England/Thompson Streets!
@@paulkoza8652 So a pedestrian crossing would make more sense than throwing in a light or a stop sign that isn't needed for any authentic traffic reasons. It really IS good for two-lane roads, but they usually aren't the dangerous ones anyway.
In the UK, we have flashing orange crossing signals, and have had them since 1935, so for almost as long as we've had cars.
The difference is that the lights are a lot bigger, they flash all the time, and cars are required to stop when someone puts their foot on the road. In my experience, they always do, and most of the time they will stop anyway when I'm approaching the road.
That depends on where you are. In London, cars will race to cut you off at zebra crossing sometimes. Other times you get that double threat. You get cars on one lane stopping and you begin to cross but the opposite lane has cars still going purposely ignoring pedestrians crossing and glancing at the stopped car as they pass by. There's some tiger crossing where bicycles are allowed to cross as well but not every vehicle is happy with that so they also race to cut you off. Of those who stop the odd one will moan if they don't get a loud audible thank you.
Quieter less busy areas tend to have the most compliant vehicles who stop immediately when someone is near the crossing even when the person isn't going to cross. Even a regular traffic crossing doesn't guarantee cars will stop at a red light on a busy A road when there are pedestrians who used the button and can see the green man telling them to step out. Once a car sees the one ahead running a red light the rest just follow.
I think it's amazing that the US HAWK systems (equivalent to UK pelican/puffin crossings) don't appear to be ubiquitous.
A pelican/puffin crossing in the UK is treated IDENTICALLY to any other red light at a traffic intersection (that is, no one drives through a red -- I've seen it happen maybe twice, and I'm certain both times were a stupid accident with the driver not noticing the red, rather than deliberate).
So why aren't HAWK crossings more common in the US? Likely due to cost if you have to give each lane of your 7 lane stroad it's own overhanging red light (in the UK, roads are almost always narrow enough for a set of red lights on each side of the road to be sufficient).
@@jacke6579
We build so much road many municipal actually cannot even afford to maintain the road. Improve the road you said?
@@jintsuubest9331 Maybe redesign it so they don't have to spend as much on it, so it's actually a return on investment.
The Belisha Beacon, name for Transport Minister Leslie Hore-Belisha, who introduced them in 1934 after coming to the conclusion that everything CityNerd identifies here as inadequate was as useless as CityNerd says it is. And I can't speak for London but at least in the north of England people still respect them. The US has this odd combination of a more all-encompassing network of crosswalks backed by generally stronger laws but far less complianc , far less enforcement, and generally less obvious signage.
As someone who walks around a hospital complex with these things all over the place, i can tell they dont work. I almost get hit at least once every day. Amount of times i have to stop in the middle of street and yell at someone is amazing.
I was in Moscow once and they have incredibly wide boulevards, 4, 6, 8 lanes wide throughout the city. Their approach to crosswalks it to simply not have any. Well, not for those over-wide boulevards. Instead, they have pedestrian tunnels under the road at many of the intersections. You walk down the steps on one side of the street, walk though the tunnel, and up the stairs on the other side. There's no accommodation for handicapped people, i.e. no ramps, but at least it's an attempt to protect the majority of pedestrians.
That Hawk device is ridiculous - in Canada we just use traffic lights even for high volume pedestrian crossings, flashing green means it's not going to change unless a pedestrian hits the button, and then once they do it just cycles like a normal intersection, that's all
In Colorado Springs there’s one pedestrian light that is an actual stop light, beg button, and a trail. It is great but the biggest issue I see is the cycle is so long that people ignore the red light and blow through it.
Also, love that your in the ABQ! When I was stationed in Clovis, NM about four hours to the east I would try to go to ABQ once a month and it really grew on me.
Sounds like there are far bigger and much more complex issues with that intersection than just the length of that cycle. Something else must be amiss there too.
Colorado Springs native here…. Cos is a suburban wasteland with little, if anything, in the way of usable pedestrian/cycling infrastructure, much less any reliable and frequent transit. It’s funny bc Colorado is full of outdoorsy people who live to be outside in any weather, but for some reason people in my city think walking and biking can only be recreational and not something that’s integrated into daily life. It’s getting better in the same way that many us cities are going in a vaguely “urbanist” direction without any substantial challenge to car-dependency. Tdlr, there’s something deeply inhumane about pretty much every car intersection in COS , and I don’t see it getting that much better for pedestrians or cyclists without literally starting all over again lmao
@@detectivefabes I am a Springs native too, I grew up in Southgate. I live in downtown, go to school at UCCS and I commute to Peterson. I love where I live. I have friends that live off of Powers. I refuse to ever live past Union Blvd. I only go out eat to go out to Pete for work.
I ride my bike everyday and ride the bus as much as possible. I hate how car dependent the city is. I actually decided to leave the aerospace industry in hopes to pursue a career as an urban planner. I used to commute to Denver for a few years and that’s what probably fueled my hatred for cars even more.
I visited Boulder a few years back. Their bike network was pretty awesome. More people need to experience that.
This is all of the controlled pedestrian crossings here in Sweden, including mid-block. I don't understand why they have to invent a new type of signal just for pedestrian crossings? Drivers know the red light, it's been drilled into them that if they see a red light, they stop.
There should be pop-up severe tire damage spikes on either side of pedestrian crossings with pushbutton flashers. I can't think of anything else that might get drivers to actually stop.
Replace the little flags they hand out with Panzerfausts maybe? Best defense is a good offense.
At railway crossings they had to add flashing red lights and arms that fold down to block the road because even with a risk of being hit by a train drivers wouldn't stop.
Talk about enforcement lol
@@fallenshallriselet Darwin do it’s job
Time to contact the World Bollard Association!
I'm in Connecticut, and when I leave the northeast, it always amazes me how much worse the stroad situation is, as a driver. I don't feel safe driving on a lot of these roads. That unsigned intersection where it takes 12 minutes to cross, its not that much easier to cross or turn left in a car. You can maybe deal with a smaller gap than a person needs, but acceleration takes time, and that is a lot of traffic to keep track track of as you look back and forth. I visited family in Virgina and was amazed at finding a road that was needlessly four lanes each way, with driveways and all on it, and cars crossing in front of you, and it just seeming absolutely nuts.
Here in CT, our stroads are mainly old routes which have been widened for a few miles, and rarely past two lanes in each direction, plus some turning lanes. Yes, really pedestrian unfriendly, but at least somewhat manageable. They often have buses that run along them, or even trains, and at least make some attempt at making the signaled crossings useable. We have the Boston Post Rd, which is probably one of the original stroads, widened to two lanes each way through what had been rural areas, before there were any expressways of any kind, and by the 60s, pretty well filled in with shops along their length in what are now moderately dense suburban towns. Traffic isn't a dream, but its also not awful. It moves, and another lane wouldn't really do much more than let you get to waiting at the next traffic light a little faster.
My point is, people driving should care that roads that are safer to drive can also be roads that are safer to walk. Scaling things back just a little isn't perfect, but can make quite a difference. If making turns feels like a harrowing experience on a street, just think of how much worse that is if you aren't in a steel box.
As always, it comes down to using the right tool for the job. These are often haphazardly chosen for 6 lane stroads where a different solution is ideal. These seem to work good for slow traffic areas (like shopping centers) alerting traffic to peds that are crossing where visibility is obstructed by parked cars. As a Professional Engineer, I think we need to do better on all forms of accessibility and treating the issue with an eye to people rather than vehicle flow rate.
The city i live in (CT) has a mid block crossing on main street that is simply a normal traffic light over the crosswalk.
No need to over engineer a solution, if you want cars to stop on some condition just use a normal stoplight that they are familiar with.
The road is 4 lanes wide plus parking, but its a regularly used crossing and in 2 years i haven't witnessed any "accidents" at it.
As far as school zone crossings go, have schools be on side streets to reduce volumes and hire crossing guards to control both the children and the traffic. A school on a 4+ lane stroad is a design failure.
@@jasonreed7522 exactly! We do that for Fire departments all the time. Light just stays green until the fire department needs to exit the station. But that's one of the warrant conditions in the green book. If we had a warrant condition for just a dangerous pedestrian intersection, cities would be able to consider it easier.
My neighborhood recently got one of those led flashing crosswalks. It actually works really well where they put it.... Not on a giant highway, rather on a small 2-way residential road. It makes it really easy to see when people are crossing, especially at night time.
Superb video. I like this format of a deep dive into technical details, I kinda like it better than the top-ten cities format.
I'd be very surprised if that 98% compliance figure was accurate. They have these crossings at multiple locations on San Fernando St by San José State University, and I'd be surprised if compliance was as high as 10%.
I'm surprised you didn't look to international comparisons for effective pedestrian crossings. Crossings from the UK have evolved from zebra, to pelican, to puffin crossings. They use standard traffic signals that near-as-dammit get 100% compliance.
Zebra was striped with flashing yellow beacons. There's not many of these anymore.
Pelican was the first push-button crossing. Standard traffic signals turn yellow, then red to stop cars and give pedestrians a walk signal. After a few seconds the yellow starts flashing, meaning that if the crossing is clear, drivers can go. After a few seconds of flashing the traffic signal goes back to green.
Puffin is the same as the pelican but has a different positioning of the pedestrian signal. Instead of on the opposite side of the street, it's on the same side of the street and on the pole beside you, positioned so that you're looking at it in the same direction as looking to see if the cars have actually stopped.
HAWK is so confusing I don't know how it became a standard or why it's better than standard red-yellow-green signals. The fact that they go dark means that drivers are not looking out for them. A green signal gets your attention in a way that a dark signal does not. You're going to keep an eye on it on approach even if it's green, and you'll be ready to hit the brakes if it turns yellow. With a dark signal you may not even notice it at all, so when it does start flashing there's a much higher chance that you'll miss it. I'd love to see the data comparing HAWK compliance in the US with Puffin compliance in the UK. I'll bet there's a big difference.
I was surprised by that RRFB percentage, too. Unless non-compliance is literally someone getting run over, I don't see how greater Boston metro area alone isn't dragging that percentage way down.
I would say that RRFBs and HAWKs would only work if you were ready, willing, and able to narrow down and take out lanes (turning one or two of them into left turn lanes, for example).
That’s what Minneapolis did with Lyndale Ave (as you visited earlier and had an example of). As someone who’s lived a few blocks away from that stretch of road (which is actually under the jurisdiction of Hennepin County, not the city of Minneapolis, which was a whole other issue in ironing out improvements for that stretch when ideas were being discussed), it used to be a lot more hazardous for people to cross the street before the RRFBs were installed as the two-lane-each-way street was narrowed. It also used to be a lot noisier to be on Lyndale if you were outside and I’ve noticed that it’s a lot more pleasant to hang out and have a coffee/tea or brunch, whereas before, I’d have to use earplugs to muffle the car and truck noise coming from the street.
As much as these are great, I wish more drivers would be aware that people walk the streets and have a right to them as much as they do. One of my friends was killed in a hit and run in January on a smaller, much more quiet and narrow street around a lake in Minneapolis. It seems like, even on a quiet street like that, drivers have an attitude that makes them much more entitled to drive than they do in being responsible in treating pedestrians as people…
I wish that they wold get rid of left turn lanes, and then bring back street side parking. That will more likely slow traffic down.
@@eugenetswong Lyndale has always had street side parking, which was its own nightmare when the street was 2 lanes each way. [I live 2 blocks away from Lyndale and cross it fairly often.] It's a busy street, not quite a stroad, but about as close as you can get in a very urban area.
Changing to one lane each way, with left turn lanes. RRFBs, and red-painted bus stop zones has minimally decreases the number of cars - but being squished into fewer lanes makes them all drive under the speed limit. I never feel truly safe crossing a busy road, but I do feel safER. And the plan is to calm Lyndale even more, then start work on Hennepin (the sister almost stroad a few blocks to the west.
@@lizcademy4809Thanks for the info! You have my sympathies.
The beauty of street side parking is that there should be no NIMBY opposition.
@@eugenetswong Since I don't drive, the street side parking is no problem for me ... especially since it slows down the moving cars even more.
@@lizcademy4809A beautiful thing about street side parking is that it can act as a natural barrier between the traffic and the bike lane.
in my city (in Canada) they put up signs showing how fast you are going when going through a school zone, where the limit is active from 8 am to 8 pm. and since they added it, so many more people have slowed down.
We have those here too in Vegas, they even show "Slow down" when someone is going 5mph over the limit. Nobody cares and everyone speeds through.
@@VincentNguyen85 I have seen the opposite in my city
Something simple city engineers could do to make bikes paths safer would be to ALWAYS put them outside of shoulder parking/unloading zones (far right side) . It's cringe seeing city planners create elaborate bike lanes in which bikers are sandwiched between parked cars and busy roads. This means the bike lane will always be violated whenever a car needs to park or unload. Sometimes just widening a sidewalk and allow mix use for bikers/walkers can be a good solution.
Also drivers do not look when opening the door! such cycle lanes resulted in many "doorings" when first introduced. The cyclist then has nowhere to go to avoid the door as there is traffic on their left.
I'm decidedly not a fan of mixed-use bike/pedestrian areas, though my evidence is entirely anecdotal. In the 5 years I was there my university campus had numerous injuries and even a fatality due to pedestrians being hit by cyclists before they prohibited cycling on high traffic sidewalk areas and the town widened multiple roads in the downtown area for dedicated bike lanes.
In areas where there is street parking, traffic is very slow moving and vehicles have to share the lane with cyclists and honestly it works quite well, but that's only because the city govt did a good job of making the downtown unattractive to thru traffic and bulking up the roads *around* that area to encourage using the bypass routes.
@@Neotenico I biked a lot when at my school with mixed pedestrian/bike trails and never had an issue. I'm much more worried about car + bike collisions vs pedestrian + bike car collisions. When I'm on a road going back park cars and side drives, it's very stressful, as your head has to be constantly on a swivel to prevent from being blindsided.
They have installed a lot of these HAWK crossings around Georgia Tech and on Buford Hwy in Atlanta which is the definition of STROAD. There are a lot of people that walk in this area and it could be a mile between cross walks. They installed several of these, but I see people run them constantly and almost saw someone get hit once.
I used to live in Atlanta and often shopped on Buford Hwy. I frequently saw really scary stuff, like young mothers with toddlers trying to cross this huge stroad to get to or from a bus stop. As you say, no crosswalks or signals in sight.
Stroad
@@ThreeRunHomer evils of spell check
I live in ABQ and nobody is going to stop for someone in a crosswalk. I've seen people run that red light at Alvarado nearly hitting someone. I'm usually just happy if they are on the right side of the road.
Recently drove past a nearby bus stop (never seen a bus here in 10yrs) and the poor guy sitting on it looked absolutely terrified. The intersection is the edge of a school zone, 8 lanes wide, with a speed limit of 45mph at which speed I get passed by everyone and lots of angry honks. All I could think was how long until he figures out there's no bus coming 😢
European here (from Hungary). This is the typical case of not learning from someone else, but inventing something bad. The fact that the HAWK signal doesn't *always* lets the drivers know that they're approaching a pedestrian crossing is the worst my transportation engineer brain can imagine. In Europe we use classic signals where you don't have to learn this flashing red bs, but yield if yellow or red. But because if inactive it's a solid green, it tells the driver that there is something crossing the road.
The HAWK signal is actually just an American version of the Pelican crossing, which in the UK itself is long considered obsolete.
The UK now uses Puffin crossings, which have an extendable pedestrian clearance period (by means of sensors mounted on poles) instead of a flashing clearance period. And they also have sensors that automatically cancel a request to cross if the pedestrian leaves the detection zone.
I figured out a solution!
Every crossing should have a small car, what would bring pedestrians from one side of the road to the 2nd side.
A steel body of the car would provide safety in case of collision.
And the next generation will come with a battle tank to boost safte even further!
This type of street design is like building a 10' fence and deciding whether or not to add a gate by measuring how many people climb over it. I though engineers were supposed to be logical thinkers and wouldn't just blindly follow some rulebook.
I believe that you physically need to redesign roads and intersections so it's physically impossible to do the wrong thing but at the very least I'd like to see these cites hand out at least as many tickets for failing to yield as there are accidents and injuries per year.
Used to use a HAWK light once day for classes. Almost got hit twice by 40+ mph traffic. Haven’t been back since.
Yeah the one I've used scares the crap out of me 😂
You pointed this out, but I found a weird pattern in the examples you showed and in my own city. For bikes, most of the effort goes into making better paths, but the intersections and crossings get completely neglected. If the path is great but the intersections are still dangerous, it's almost as if no improvements were made at all.
lol we have those flashy lights for a pedestrian crossing on a narrow (literally each of the lanes are actually very narrow in comparison to stroads) 4-lane crossing in a downtown, each two lanes separated by a median. Cars NEVER listen to it. I've taken to simply smacking the button, then stepping out during a gap and glaring daggers at the cars coming towards me.
Where I live, in Canada, RRFB's have started to become the normal for new crossings. Most existing crossings, not at major intersections, have a pedestrian control traffic light. It is just a normal traffic light with a flashing green instead of a steady one to differentiate it, only changes when the button is pressed.
bet u live in Vancouver ???
@@garyholt8315 yup
From my experience, the UK has great systems for pedestrians looking to cross roads. I wish we could get some inspiration from them, not just for pedestrian crossings but roundabouts as well.
What? No little flag the pedestrians can hold in front of them to be more "visible"? No wonder those pedestrian crossings are not safe!
Replace flags with polearms and train pedestrians in infantry block tactics
If a car doesn't yield, form up!
As a resident of Albuquerque it was very interesting to see your video today and all of the different places you visited riding a bike in Albuquerque. I ride my bike in Albuquerque but I'll never ride it on San Mateo. That's just asking for a death wish. Which goes to your point if we don't use it as pedestrians or bicyclists the city will not see the need to change.
They recently installed an RRFB on a non-stroad crossing on one of our bike routes in Denver (I think it's 29th & Perry). "98%" has to be a generous number because most cars never stop.
Those HAWK things appeared overnight (not really) a few years ago in Austin. My first reaction was confusion: introducing a completely new traffic light design that looks nothing like traffic lights that have been around for almost a century seemed like a bizarre idea, especially since the whole point was to keep pedestrians from being killed. That said, they do seem to generally work, here in Austin, most of the time, but in a less pedestrian-friendly (unbelievable that there could be such a thing) place like Fort Worth drivers ignore them way way more often than I've seen in Austin. Also, putting in one HAWK crosswalk along a miles-long stroad takes a bunch of negotiation, so they end up literally miles apart. It's a band-aid on an amputation, pretty much.
There are a few by me and they do seem to be effective. The part that seems to have the least compliance is the flashing red phase after the solid red. In theory that means it's effectively a stop sign (just as any flashing red is to be taken as a stop sign), but usually it just means the first vehicle in a line stops and then all successive vehicles go - instead of taking their turns stopping.
I couldn't believe the street design in Austin. No parallel parking or bike lanes, sidewalks running alongside multi-lane stroads with 40mph+ traffic just inches away. I was holding onto my children's hands for dear life while walking from the hotel to the fast food joint across the street. In San Jose I'm much more relaxed because there are parallel-parked cars and a landscaped strip including trees between my kids and the traffic. I can let them walk unattached here.
@@sabretooth1997 How is the flashing red phase rationalized? Yes, people should know that, but it doesn't fit into the sequence of a light that turns solid red. It seems preferable to make the solid red phase longer as if it were a regular light (which is what the one HAWK-type intersection that I see daily looks like).
@@josephfisher426I'm of the opinion that HAWK lights are stupud and should just be replaced with regular old traffic lights, the default way of controlling cars.
And whenever a beg button is pressed at an intersection it should inject the pedestrian phase right after the current car phase. (Understandable if the system only allows 1 ped phase per complete cycle, but still undesirable as a pedestrian exposed to the elements and not in a climate controlled box)
Remember to treat a dark signal like a stop sign.
I live in the Netherlands and was really baffled about how the streets only seemed safe for cars when i visited 3 states. Safest i felt was NYC, but thats because of traffic that did not move hehe
I don't get why cities want to use a HAWK signal. Why couldn't they use a traditional flashing yellow stoplight that turns red on request? Like at fire station crossings.
It is a loophole around traffic signal warrants.
@@tonywalters7298 But why not change the rule about what you need for a signal? Those decisions end up being whatever is politically convenient, anyway...
@@josephfisher426 I would agree there. It would make more sense to change the warrants. I think there should be policies for ped crossings at regular intervals on arterials.
@@tonywalters7298 That SHOULD fit into the natural layout. Does it, often depends on the evolution of the road. Most of the arterial-type roads I drive on are 200+ years old... where they were settled extensively before traffic volume got high, and especially on the crosspieces between the spokes of the wheel centered downtown, it is only by accident that they are any good for pedestrian use. Because they've been retrospectively straightened and widened into someone's front yard... there just isn't room for a good sidewalk.
10:57 In Poland it is illegal to pass vehicles before and on a zebra crossing at all times.
The worst thing that I've noticed is that police will often take where the body landed after a collision as where the person was crossing. I saw someone get hit on a crosswalk that flung them down the street and they had to be airlifted away.
The newspaper with the police report the next day claimed that the person was jaywalking since that's where the body was found.
i think this is a reason that engineers should take more humanities and ethics courses. so they’re not just a machine plugging numbers into a formula and spitting out a result that will affect thousands of people’s lives that they have little connection to.
As a PE I can't agree more. Or if not that, at least some art courses or something like that.
All of these engineers, transit planners, etc. drive to an office somewhere and look at a blueprint on a computer screen but never take the time to actually visit the site they are planning in person to actually try it out for themselves. This is how you get crossing intervals so short that even someone 18-35 in good health can't make it across in the time allotted or those bike lanes that slowly taper down to nothing as a right hand turn lane takes over their space or a narrow sidewalk with a telephone pole right in the middle of it.
I doubt humanities courses would make bad engineers any better at engineering.
Ethics is the more important part for an engineer imo. Engineers are trained from day one about optimization and trade-offs. The best ones don't just answer an optimization issue correctly, they know to ask "is this the right problem to solve"?
In Montreal, the Cegep system requires engineer to get 3 classes of philosophy and ethics. You might be on to something
Appreciate you discussing this topic. At first it seems esoteric until you really pause and observe. Living in the US, I detest the 'need' to drive. I would like to walk and bike more places. I also live in Houston. That's one of the unfriendliest (i.e., deadliest) places for pedestrians. Induced demand is insane here to the point where it's globally ridiculed. I feel the most sorry for the sizeable portion of our city that either cannot afford a vehicle or are unable to drive. These most vulnerable populations are also exposed to our arcane traffic habits the most. Crosswalks must be the most dangerous. I'll even catch myself muttering curses when I have to suddenly slow down for someone crossing a 4-lane road without a crosswalk. But then I recall how difficult it is for them, at the walking scale, to venture 3000 feet to the nearest marked crosswalk just to walk another 3000 feet back to where they wanted to be. We should do so much better for our cities. Thank you for bringing specific attention to this area.
Every time you said "hawk signal" I just imagined the audio effect of a hawk cry for an assistive beep and some version of the Bat Signal shining against the night sky causing drivers to slow
Something your comment on cycling infrastructure reminded me. A lot of councils have turned disused railway lines into "rail trails". These are walk/cycle paths that connect smaller towns where in the past, no pedestrian path existed at all. However, when these trails cross a highway or major road, pedestrians are expected to cross 60mph traffic without any support, not even a painted crosswalk.
When the trains ran, they had flashing lights and boom barriers, or a grade separation.
I almost got hit on one of these yesterday in Seattle. The oncoming driver went around a corner and didn't slow down at all blowing through the crosswalk at full speed. Luckily I hadn't quite entered that lane so I could step back in time.
I didn't think you'd actually make a video on RRFBs! They totally suck and and drivers are more likely NOT to stop if there is a sign pointing out drivers should yield to peds per a TAMU study. The recent update to our master mobility plan recommend to not use these and instead install a full traffic signal.
There’s a HAWK beacon outside the secondary entrance of the Patent and Trademark Office in Alexandria, VA. I live and work around there, so I’ve had to use the HAWK as a pedestrian and driven through it as a driver. As a ped, you’re lucky if you can actually get the signal to work. Last time I was crossing there, I waited 90 seconds for the signal to turn and some jackass still ran the red light.
Another civil engineer and viewer, in Utah. The normalization of drivers killing pedestrians and cyclists on the streets infuriates me more than almost anything else. I had to talk a CITY ENGINEER out of installing a slip lane in a 25mph neighborhood. Bad infrastructure kills. It's practically my career goal to design infrastructure that slows down every urban and suburban vehicle.
If we're going to put the RRFB and HAWK bandaids on multi-lane stroads, we should traffic calm before them. Narrower lanes, s-curves, speed limit drops. One of the treatments that I've seen that I kind of like are speed tables. The pedestrian/cyclist gets to maintain their elevation above, and the car has to come up to that elevation. To me it's implicit that the car is in the ped's space, not the other way around. They do seem to do a decent job of slowing down speeds a bit.
Crazy when you see "not wanting to inconvenience drivers with those pesky pedestrians" hit such car-brained states as putting entire pedestrian overpasses in--because god forbid we just slow down the damned cars.
Oh man been waiting for this one because I love yellow flashing beacons, because they are instant and I don't have to wait for a walk signal. I have walking routes around my city based around them so I hardly have to wait at a crappy big intersection.
What I learned from this video is that my city is full of drivers used to stopping for pedestrians. Lots of people don't even activate the flashing and cars still stop for them.
But I have to remember that I pay close attention to cars, try to make eye contact, and act like I'm going to walk out into the street whether I see them or not, scaring them into stopping. And I'm a man with a beard. Lots of people won't or can't cross until they see the car has stopped for them, and in those cases many cars won't stop because they think incorrectly that the pedestrian is waiting for a clearing, rather than waiting for them to stop. I've also been to other smaller cities where I attempted to use a yellow flashing beacon, and even waved at drivers to get their attention, but none stopped. So clearly these things by themselves are useless, but in conjunction with a whole traffic calming and pedestrian safety plan, they can be great for able-bodied people like me with quick car-dodging reflexes.
A few days ago, I saw a bike lane in middle of 2 car lanes, with no barrier in between.
You should see how California handles bike lanes intersecting with turn lanes. It's like the designers think _pavement paint_ is some kind of magical forcefield that keeps cyclists from being run over.
Here in Australia the most common pedestrian crossing solutions on busy roads are either to have push button walk/dont walk signals at already signalized intersections or to have standalone push button walk/don't walk signals (in cases where the gap between intersections is too big and they need a crossing in the middle). Those would work much better than RRFBs or HAWKs. (especially if you had enforcement)
For lesser crossings we have the standard zebra crossing (possibly with a refuge island in the middle) with signage in both directions telling cars to give way to pedestrians (the signs are bright fluro colors and retro-reflective so they can be easily seen at all times).
I definetly take my pedestrian-friendly city for granted. Here when there is a crosswalk on a main street (with automated traffic lights), the side streets with cross walks usually have pedestrian operated traffic lights. Yes, we have those flashing yellow lights too, usually in school areas, but to cross, you just hit a button and the light turns yellow and red instantly (unless it had just been pressed as cars still need to go). That way you can cross safely. Also comes in handy when I need to catch the bus, since by pressing the light, A) I can cross to go to the bus stop and B) the bus can't move forward and leave without me. Surprised more cities don't have those.
RRFB's work very well on a bike path I ride frequently that has many street crossings. The thing that makes it work best is that it senses an approaching rider and automatically lights up before the rider gets there. This greatly improves the flow of riders on the path as they only have to slow down briefly to make sure drivers are paying attention. Without it, riders have to stop, press a button, and wait for the traffic to notice. I like it because in a sense, it gives priority to bike riders.
Great video. I somehow weaseled my way into a planning job for a locality with no qualifications, started last monday. Holy crap the cards are stacked against vulnerable road users. I knew this going in , but it was unbelievable some of the things I heard some state DOT employees say today. I am excited to patiently fight it for now, but it remains to see if it's an impossible fight!! The Bipartisan infrastructure bill is kinda the shining light in the darkness so far I think, at least there are a lot of federal priorities and documentation now that back me up
If you have time, the Netherlands street design guidelines have been translated to English. According to CZcams, they design the best streets so that design guide should be a good spot to start negotiating from. (and it actually cites reasons and data to backup most of the design recommendations)
Our local government was hyping an upcoming “Actuated Pedestrian Crossing Signal” to make crossing a road near a local park so much safer. It was hyped as the HAWK, with links to what is shown. It turned out to be an even lamer version of the RRFB shown - a single blinking light, right above the existing sign, when you pushed a button.
If you're in the southwest I would check out Tucson and their implementation of HAWK signals. They have done a pretty decent job of installing them across the city. Especially along the bike boulevards. Fun fact is that the first HAWK was designed in Tucson by a city engineer. Tucson is also interesting streetwise because it's a traditional grid system, but there are no ring roads around the city. There's only I-10 and I-19 on the western side of the city, so it kinda has a Vancouver type feel of majority surface streets. Quite different from our big brother Phoenix to the north.
I always knew US traffic law was backwards, as primarily an automobile operator, and occasional cyclist. But I never knew just how fucking loathsome it actually is by design.
"increases yielding rates by 98%"
Me: 98% improvement of 2% yield rate really tells how much it sucks... Things really are horrendously bad...
We just got a HAWK light for the first time in my city's cultural district. And you said it best: people stop... eventually. I drive through that crosswalk all the time, and I think I've seen every possible driver reaction. Sometimes they're like, "wait, there was a light there?" or otherwise completely ignored it and blow straight through it. Sometimes they say, "wait, so I need to stop?" and will stop way too early, nearly causing accidents. And still others are like, "the pedestrian crossed, so I can go now," even the the pedestrian is only halfway, which makes all the other cars want to go, which starts this awkward game of tag with the pedestrian in the middle of the street. It's just pretty wild.
Up in Boston we have some busy two lane roads where they put up RRFBs, and I quite like them, not because I think drivers are less likely to hit me but because I am more confident that I'll be noticed, especially when it's dark out (which in the winter is like 5 pm), and be given an opening by some courteous driver who sees that I'm waiting to cross.
What are your thoughts on roundabouts in terms of walkability? Traffic engineers do claim that it is cheaper to maintain and reduces pedestrian fatalities but on the flip side you have to cross multiple slip lanes (kind of like what you would find when crossing on a diamond interchange) while relying on cars to stop for you. Also on topic of diamond interchange, what are your thoughts on that?
IMHO should be "better" then a 4 way intersection as bigger ones car traffic is ONLY approaching from one direction and the extra walking distance allows / builds in "islands"
?Not just bikes? showed a "pedestrian friendly" Norway style that moved the crossing "back away" and was designed to be "better" / safer" for ALL involved
Now this is a video I can definitely relate to in Australia. Being a pedestrian here is definitely fraught.
RRFB's by my house are the bane of my existence. There's not a single day that goes by that I don't push the button to watch 2 or 3 cars try and slip through before I can cross. On the plus side, I guess they are better than a beg button further down my bike route that takes 5 minutes to let me cross (and where someone got hit a few months ago jumping the light)
In Ireland we have a lot of zebra crossings which are basically on top of a large speed bump so the motorist has to slow down to or below the speed limit or risk damaging their car, and in the process they’ll have more time to check for pedestrians
The frogger analogy is too true, unfortunately.
"mildly" sarcastic??!! And why is there a "high" option for motorist compliance? That's as useful as a "10" or "1" on a toaster.
Gosh, the school zones on 6 lane stroads are so surreal. In my town in England, where the roads are usually two lanes wide, we have school zones that limit you to 20, but you don’t need to obey them, it’s only a request. And even here, people often don’t obey it. It’s so unusual to see it on massive roads.
My Dallas urbanist adventure to get to work downtown:
-Drive ~1.5 miles down the road to the train station
-Park in the park and ride
-attempt to cross 3 lanes of high speed traffic or use a beg button that takes like 3 minutes to do anything
-get to the median
-repeat to cross 3 more lanes
- hope that the time crossing didn’t make me miss the train