A few weeks ago, I tweeted about the new pedestrian activated signal buttons (aka beg buttons, pedestrian call buttons) at Quadra and Caledonia and voiced my displeasure. The more that I’ve thought about that crossing in the time since, the more I have wanted to write an article about how annoying I find them. I should start out by saying that I do understand the underlying traffic management benefit why someone might want to have pedestrian call buttons at an intersection. However, there are at least three reasons why I think that in an urban area we should give them a pass.

Street Ownership

The first reason comes down to street ownership, and I know that those that tend to roll their eyes at anti-car statements will already likely have tuned out here, but I as a car owner, still think that a street should be shared as much as it can be. That statement has spectrum that runs locally from the properly car dominated Hwy 17 freeway; to the completely shared space of the Kings Road woonerf. For spaces closer to downtown we should be trying to move closer to the woonerf end of the spectrum while still allowing consistent safe vehicle movements. Using the suburban pedestrian call button in an urban area clearly demonstrates that the priority is vehicle movement, not people movement.

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The best example of this for me is the intersection of Cook and Bay. This intersection not only has beg buttons to turn on the walk signal, but it also allows for them to be turned on within a certain time frame after the signal has turned green in the direction you are walking (this is sold as a pedestrian benefit). This means that as you approach the light, there is an impetus to run to the button to try and meet that hidden timeframe. A second scenario that is equally as frustrating is when you approach the intersection and someone who is not familiar with the functionality is already waiting in the direction you are going to cross so you assume that they have pushed the button only to see the lights change and the walk signal not come on. Imagine the frustration of drivers if a light cycled without allowing one lane a green light? Having a timed walk interval removes all of these issues for pedestrians without causing really any noticeable difference to the vehicle traffic except perhaps less frustration for when they are already waiting for a green light and a pedestrian comes up and turns on the walk signal after the green light has started. Turning these urban intersections back to timed pedestrian crossings evens the ownership as neither car, bike or pedestrian has to push a button.

Traffic Management

The biggest argument against having the lights cycle with a pedestrian crossing all the time, is that there is apparently some feeling that this is unfair to car drivers when there are no pedestrians (of course the same is true for pedestrians when there are no cars, you still have to wait for the walk signal). I want to turn that argument around though, and the light at Bay and Cook is again a great example. When lights don’t cycle, it gives a green in one direction. If that extended green were along Cook Street, a car could theoretically drive from North Park Village to Hillside Avenue uninterrupted. I can attest to late night high speed driving along Cook Street, as I can hear it from my home. Having the lights cycle in urban areas actually is a benefit as it will limit the distances that a vehicle can travel on green and ensure that speeds are kept low or at least lower.

Accessibility

While I am sure there are more, here is my last reason and that is ease of use and accessibility. Between my home and my work, a twenty minute walk from Oaklands to Downtown, the pedestrian call buttons come in at least four different varieties, some with quite different ways to activate them. While I am used to them, as I walk this space hundreds of times a year, I know the quirks of each button, for those that don’t or for people with disabilities, having to interact differently with each crossing seems ludicrous. It may even be more dangerous. I know that the City will say that it is because each construction project has to use the technology that was included in the contract and that there is always a plan to upgrade pedestrian call buttons to the latest version when that intersection is being worked on but the problem with this approach is that the technology changes continuously, the contracts change continuously and the politicians change continuously. So there will never be some magic point when we have the same pedestrian interaction at every light.

When I think back to the early days of the pandemic, while overall a very dark time, there were glimmers of positivity and one of those amazing glimmers was the turning off of the pedestrian call buttons around the city at intersections. Overall, there was no great slowdown in traffic while they were turned off, the city continued to function and it seems that there was never a moment’s thought of whether they actually needed to be turned back on. But they were.

The thing is that as we spend money trying to figure out which pedestrian call button is the hot new trend for installation, we have an already built technology at every intersection that costs no extra, in fact it is the same technology that we have had at intersections for likely 30 years. That is the walk / don’t walk signals and the alternating chirping for people with visual impairments. The light timing can be altered by time of day. Just always have a pedestrian crossing signal timed in and we can make the city a little more fair, a little more shared, a little cheaper to administrate and a little more safe.

If you know of a reason, beyond ease of driving, where pedestrian call buttons at intersections are useful, please let me know in the comments.