I think they are meant for people to believe they do something so they’ll feel better and wait. I used to walk a lot and encounter lots of crosswalk with buttons and I got used to how fast I should go in order to catch green every time and I could predict when the next crosswalk was going to turn green. If they truly worked then they should have been out of sync. I never pushed the buttons and I saw the light turning green even though no one pushed the button, if the buttons worked then why would the light turn green?
I also asked gemini about this and he said I’m not going insane, strange because I never mentioned if I was insane or not, but good to know I’m not.
Maybe some buttons work and other don’t depending on where it is?
The buttons are prominently there to meet ADA (Americans with disabilities Act) or ACA (Accessable Canada Act).
Buttons at intersections help people with mobility issues to cross at dedicated crosswalks or crossways safely, most buttons extend the cross time when pressed.
For people that have visual imperments the buttons will generally activate a chirp sound, which helps with a “haptic feedback” of where crosswalks might be or in which direction to proceed.
Anyways, they have become so ubiquitous that’s they are pretty much expected everywhere, so much so that people don’t see them as accessible infrastructure (which is a pretty good thing TBH).
I think every crosswalk should have those retractable bollards.
I don’t know that they affect the timing of the traffic lights, but I know that some of them won’t change to the “walk” signal if nobody pushed the button.
They do.
But repeatedly pressing them does not make them work any faster.
Depends on the location. Some places the lights turn to walk at regular intervals no matter what, the button only activates the beeping. But in my city the crosswalks never say walk unless someone pressed the button first.
Same thing with elevators. The door close button only works in a fraction of elevators.
The elevator thing is interesting.
At first, you just would think it works on a delay.
People notice that they don’t really do anything. Rumor spreads that the buttons aren’t even wired.
Eventually I remember coming across an article that explained most of the time it’s a glitch. The button is telling it to close, but there’s some kind of timing limitation that means the auto-close just happens first.
But yeah, for both I’m sure there’s a lot of variation.
I’ve seen all kinds.
Some will instantly change the lights and give cars a red.
Some will trigger the lights after a period of time - maybe synced to another traffic light, or a timer so it doesn’t change too quickly/often.
Some won’t actually cause the lights to change any sooner, but pressing the button will cause the chirping sound to play for people with visual impairments when the light finally changes.
And sometimes they’re broken and trigger the lights even when nobody pushed it. Those are fun when you’re driving a car.
Their behaviour is programmed based on the characteristics of the intersection. If it’s a very lopsided one where one direction has heavy traffic and the other very little, then the button might trigger a light change.
Other times, the light timing doesn’t change, but the button will trigger the crosswalk to indicate walk after the next change.
Other behaviours I’ve seen is it changing the advance green/left turn signal, or showing the walk symbol while all traffic is stopped.
And then I’ve seen a few that do appear to do absolutely nothing - but that doesn’t mean that’s the case. For example, an intersection might have a button that only does something at night when there’s very little traffic, but doesn’t during the day when the intersection is constantly busy.
The buttons in my town make the lights last longer so you can cross safely in a decent amount of time instead of having to run.
Depends on where you are. The ones near me actually do something. The pedestrian lights do not change to Walk unless a button is pushed.
In many cases, it activates the crossing signal for the entire intersection as well. As in, traffic will stop in all directions and you as a pedestrian can cross diagonally without issue.
Every municipality is different.
Some do nothing except beep and vibrate for visually impaired people. That style, try holding it down for 3 seconds. When you get the walk sign you should get audio and tactile feedback.
Some lights will not change to walk unless you press the button. Some only exhibit the behaviour at night.
Here’s a video of Nic Laporte studying them in Vancouver, BC, and here we have Bike ones in addition to standard pedestrian ones.
As others have said, it depends on location. Where I live in the US, the crosswalk won’t turn green for pedestrians unless the button was pushed. If it’s an intersection where traffic primarily flows on one street, and the traffic lights only change when the occasional car from the other street, the traffic light will never tell traffic to stop, and your crosswalk will never turn green. You have to push the button to signal the lights to change.
I wish designers would realize pedestrians are not going to wait a full cycle to cross and often all pedestrian lights are doing is holding up traffic for people who have already crossed.
Aren’t they for blind people, as there’s a thing under that spins until the light turns green, so they can touch it to know when to go?
I don’t think so. We have sounds here, when you can cross a sound is played.
No. Look at the textured ground at the cutout from the sidewalk to the road. That warns blind people that there’s a surface transition. And the crosswalk noises let them know which direction is safe to cross.
Maybe the touchy spinny thing is for deaf and blind people then? They have them at traffic lights where I live, plus the beeping and ground texture
That’s interesting! I’ve only seen ones that speak, I’ll have to keep an eye out to see if there are any with tactile indicators near me.
It’s individual at each intersection where I live, and as other comments have mentioned even varies at different times.
I’ve timed a few and found that even if it does give pedestrians a cycle without the button being pushed, at some of them pushing the button gives it to us a bit faster.
Some are functional and some aren’t. Where I live, at all the major intersections, they’re just decoration. However, at an intersection with a smaller street crossing a main one, you will not get a walk sign across the larger road without pushing the button.
If you don’t push the button, the pedestrian red light will stay red indefinitely. If you do push the button, the light will turn green, some time in the distant future. In Europe it’s a bit better than in the USA.
