The Downside of Upgrades
(Source: Strong Towns/Emma Durand-Wood.)
If you’re a regular public transit rider in North America, you’re probably accustomed to a whole range of emotions.
When transit works well, it’s almost like magic. You hardly even need to think about it; it’s just there, seamlessly integrated into life. You get on, someone else does the driving, and you just hop off and continue your journey—no need to find parking for your vehicle or worry about a safe place to lock your bike. There is no denying that, done right, public transit serves as a “walking accelerator” that’s a key part of true transportation freedom.
Gil Peñalosa famously remarked that “[a]n advanced city is not one where the poor own a car, but one where the rich use public transport.” Sadly, there aren’t many places in North America where that type of “dream transit” exists. And if you haven’t experienced it firsthand, it’s hard to believe that public transit could be at once invisible and magical.
It’s more likely that riders can point to the many ways that transit fails to meet their needs. Buses that come late or too infrequently. Trips that require many transfers or take double the time it would take to drive. Bus stops that offer no reprieve from the heat or cold or a place to rest, or are located in dark and isolated areas that don’t feel safe or comfortable.
But the walkability of the environment outside of the bus or train is just as critical as all those things, even though we tend not to think about it that much.
The following is one particular failure that’s at or near the top of my public transit pet peeves list. Maybe you can relate to it.
You’re on one side of a stroad, and you need to get to your bus stop on the other side. You see your bus approaching the stop, and you begin frantically hitting the beg button to get a walk signal, knowing that it won’t help. You’re at the complete mercy of the traffic lights, and unless you want to cut across the road against many lanes of oncoming traffic, there’s nothing you can do but wait for the light to turn. If you miss your bus you’ll just have to wait for the next one (in the aforementioned less-than-ideal conditions). You wave to the driver, hoping maybe they’ll see you and take pity on you, but knowing they have a schedule to keep. You feel frustrated, angry, helpless…and all you’re trying to do is cross the street.
This has been happening to me more than usual since the bus stop near one of my frequent destinations recently got a little “upgrade.”
On one side of the stroad is a major grocery store, drugstore, bank, and other retailers. On the other, a bus stop. Up until a couple years ago, if you wanted to get from one side to the other, you used what’s known as a pedestrian corridor: a crosswalk with rapidly flashing overhead lights, which are activated by a beg button on either side. When the beg button is pushed, the flashing lights come on and drivers must stop immediately to let people cross. When the lights aren’t flashing, traffic moves freely.
If everyone behaves perfectly, this seems like a great system. It keeps traffic moving when no one needs to cross, and provides fast, on-demand crossing for pedestrians when they do. Perfect for when you need to run to catch that bus you see approaching!
But whether they’re walking or driving, humans are rarely perfect. Crossing this stroad at this corridor was always stressful, especially with kids in tow. I regularly witnessed drivers blowing through the activated lights and people stepping out into the activated corridor without checking to ensure that vehicles had stopped.
Then one day, I arrived at the corridor and realized it had been changed to a “pedestrian half signal.” Rather than pressing a beg button and immediately getting the right-of-way to cross on foot, I had to press the beg button and wait until the traffic got a red light, at which point I’d get a walk signal. This added wait time seemed like a reasonable trade-off for getting a red light, not just flashing lights telling the driver to yield.
My gut reaction to this was “awesome,” as I was used to feeling like I had to be hypervigilant at this crosswalk. Because I’d experienced and witnessed many close calls there, I wasn’t surprised to learn that it is one of the city’s highest collision areas, and a pedestrian was killed while crossing (yes, with the lights activated) in 2014. The local city councilor remarked, “That area’s a safety concern… There’s been many close calls and accidents in the past.”
With all traffic stopped at red lights, I anticipated that crossing would feel much safer. There were new stop lines painted a good distance back from the corridor (which you can see in the image below), so the new layout of the crossing felt more hospitable, like there was more breathing room.
(Source: Strong Towns/Emma Durand-Wood.)
But I quickly came to the conclusion that the pedestrian half-signal is no better, and maybe actually worse for everyone.
For pedestrians, it’s worse because they now have to endure a long wait to cross, rather than crossing on demand. When impatient or pressed for time (maybe trying to make a bus?), some opt not to wait for the walk signal to make the crossing (“jaywalk”). And, as is the case with any red light, drivers do sometimes drive through them.
And for drivers, the half-signal brings both directions of traffic to a full stop for the whole walk signal. They must obey the red, even when the intersection is clear.
The signal isn’t in any way linked to what the traffic situation actually is. The road can be very quiet with hardly any traffic, but you’ll still need to wait two minutes for a walk signal. No wonder people just decide to take matters into their own hands!
Maybe this intersection is technically safer if everyone follows all the rules, but again, humans aren’t perfect. In an attempt to make things safer, this new intersection ratchets up pedestrian frustration to the point that they’re now actually making logical, but riskier, choices.
How can this be considered an improvement to our transportation system? Drivers are now waiting where they weren’t waiting before. Pedestrians are missing buses they weren’t previously missing.
One commenter on Reddit put it like this:
“The old pedestrian crossing gave me anxiety. I'd drive through there at around 4 and in November and January the sun was just the right angle that you couldn't see the flashing lights. The new one gives me anxiety because no one waits for it.”
This “safety upgrade” paradoxically makes the pedestrian experience more dangerous. It also drives home the fact that most pedestrian infrastructure is actually car infrastructure.
With decades of typical Canadian traffic light standards embedded in my consciousness, it’s hard to envision what the solutions are in this dilemma: standard crosswalk lights aren’t cutting it, but a half-signal is just too much.
That’s why watching the Not Just Bikes video “Why the Dutch Wait Less at Traffic Lights” was such a revelation. (If you’re someone who loves nothing more than a perfect green wave of synchronized traffic lights, you will be mesmerized by this video.)
When it comes to traffic signals, engineering priorities in Amsterdam are twofold: to minimize potential conflicts for safety’s sake, and to “optimize the movement of as many people as possible, not just as many cars as possible, and that makes the road function much more efficiently.” The Dutch have implemented technology to dynamically respond to the real-time traffic conditions and allow people using different modes of transportation to move independently through discrete parts of intersections efficiently. You need to see it to grasp just how radically different this is from what we’re used to here in North America.
I’m trying to make two points here. One: that we need to push back on the idea that more controls make crossings safer, and think more holistically about the environment. Dangerous pedestrian environments all boil down to one thing: the underlying priority to make traffic speed and flow the most important goal. Until we’re ready to reconsider that priority, we will continue to struggle.
And two: good transit isn’t just about frequency, greater coverage, or decent shelters. The design of the very streets and roads that buses travel on can make or break a rider’s trip. Because what good is a bus stop if you can’t reliably get there from here?
Emma Durand-Wood likes walkable cities, front porches, street trees, bumping into neighbors, riding her bike, downtowns, and any excuse to check out a new coffee shop, bakery, or shop. A Winnipegger by choice, she lives in Elmwood with her husband and three children. You can connect with her on Twitter @emmaewood.