Why are we waiting? Prioritising the wrong kind of traffic - Car Culture #2
ฝัง
- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 4 ส.ค. 2024
- Have you ever got the feeling when you're walking or cycling that you have to wait a lot longer to get through a signalised intersection than drivers? Well, you're not imagining it. It's a deliberate "feature" of car-centric traffic engineering, and a symptom of car culture.
In this video I'll show you an example of one such intersection, and the response from Brisbane City Council traffic engineers demonstrating that they do not understand the problem.
By the way, do you like my shirts I've been wearing in my recent videos? They're products of Rovelo Creative, a design company run by Tom Flood, one of the best safe streets campaigners. Tom is working with the Better Streets campaign in Australia, so expect to see and hear more of his work!
Rovelo Creative TH-cam Channel:
/ @rovelocreative
Rovelo Creative Online shop:
www.creativebyrovelo.com/shop
If you like what I do, coffee is a great way to energise me to create more videos. You can Buy Me A Coffee here:
www.buymeacoffee.com/CoxyCycling
Absolutely spot on! Having worked for a company writing traffic management software many years ago (QLD State Government owned), I can confirm pedestrians were absolutely an afterthought, and cyclists basically not considered at all back then. What really gets me is the ones where you have a bunch of lanes stopped for the way that is going, and the cycle is perfectly long enough for the ped, but they don't run it because nobody triggered it. In so many cycles at so many intersections it would make zero difference to the traffic flow but would be a huge improvement for pedestrians, and they won't even do that...
Completely agree! And I've had similar arguments with both State and Council engineers when I make the suggestion that the pedestrian "green" should trigger automatically when the corresponding vehicle phase is triggered. But they just won't do it. It's incredibly frustrating, and what it does is encourage people to walk on the red, because you see that the traffic phase is the right phase, so you go. Otherwise you're left waiting there an entire cycle of lights.
Traffic engineers neeed to cycle more.
Traffic engineers need to put their models, guidelines and MUTCD in the bin, and adopt the Netherlands CROW manual.
Brilliant commentary Chris. Can we at some point talk about how most pedestrian beg button is are placed to the right hand side of the crossing? This causes quite a few conflicts between pedestrians, cyclists and PMD users in my experience. It also makes it much less efficient since you sometimes end up playing chicken with people while trying to keep to the left.
Excellent point. There's very little though given to button placement
In my city we do lots of two-stage (or three-stage or four-stage) crossings for pedestrians. So you usually only have to wait 45 seconds before crossing, but you only get halfway across the road and have to wait another 45 seconds on a tiny island in the middle of the road with 20 other people. The worst one I regularly cross involves 6 stages (crossing two arms and related slip roads) with a beg button for each stage which typically takes 4 minutes. Drivers will get three complete cycles in that time.
Absolutely! And traffic engineers think that's perfectly fine. Pedestrians safe: ✅️
Drivers minimally delayed: ✅️
No consideration that adding 4 minutes to a 10 minute walk is a seriously bad result.
One long junction in Edinburgh doesn't even have a pedestrian crossing. On a bicycle , using the same lane as the cars, the lights will change to red as soon as you go through them if no cars behind, putting you in the way of cars getting green lights from the side. The junction is purely designed for motorised vehicles.
In addition, the green man goes red in about 7 seconds, so when on a bike I rarely catch a green light like I do when I am driving a car. On a bike it feels like I spend an awful lot more time at the lights, in one part of my commute I have to wait for 4 walk signals within 500 metres, never timed it but if feels like 10 minutes of waiting...
...and that's why - when safe - cyclists will 'run' a red.
It's almost as if signalling was designed to ignore pedestrians and cyclists. Not quite, but pretty much.
Such a mystery why cyclists are often seen riding on through against the lights.
While we're talking about that intersection, it seems to be missing a pedestrian crossing on one side. I suspect the reason behind that is also related to car-centrism in traffic engineering.
Absolutely. There are a LOT of intersections where Brisbane City Council has not put a crossing on all legs. It's entirely about car traffic flow. That'll be another video 😉
There's an intersection like this right outside my work and the missing crossing is the one that would connect my workplace directly to our favourite after-work watering hole. Instead, we have to cross three signalised arms of the junction or risk dashing across six lanes of rush hour traffic. And of course it's absolutely all about improved motor traffic flow at the expense of pedestrians. The junction also has off-ramps and loops to allow people to turn right rather than having a right-turn lane which is yet another way traffic flow is improved at the expense of pedestrians. It's hard to believe this is in the centre of the city.
The "cycle time is the same for cars and pedestrians" guy isn't just lying about the times, he also expects pedestrians to wait twice if they're crossing diagonally or three times to cross the unserved side of the crossing.
The two intersections on either side of the mater
You cannot imagine how striking this difference feels to somebody coming from Europe. It’s infuriating to stand for 2 minutes at a busy intersection every 100 meters and inhale all those exhaust gases in Brisbane 😢 The waiting time is noticeably waaaay longer than in Europe as if people in cars and outside of the cars pay different taxes. Really hope people here would realise asap that car manufacturers’ lobby / tv propaganda profits only to those shareholders and not at all to ordinary people’s wallets, savings, time and health (asthma , overweight, obesity, mental health issues like road rage and kids development while they are shackled to the cars of soccer mummies)
Thanks heaps for sharing your perspective! You're right, it is SO different to other cities where people are prioritised over cars. People who have grown up here (like me) are completely blind to it until you get out of the car, and, most importantly, get out of Australia.
Hey Chris, loving this series! Are there any channels you know making similar content for Melbourne? I've been watching NJB a lot but would love to see case studies for where I live too!
Thanks Albert! Julian O'Shea does some good stuff based in Melbourne. A mixture of TH-cam and Twitter videos. Check him out.
Another thing that really annoys me is how often a major bike path will have to give way to vehicles on the road even when it’s a relatively minor side street. It happens all over the place, but I think the worst example is when the Bicentennial Bikeway (major bikeway) runs parallel to Coronation Drive (major road) and requires continuing cyclists to give way to vehicles turning into Archer St (minor side street).
Yeah that has long been a source of conjecture. Technically the give way sign to the cycleway is not legally enforceable, but that's not the point, it conveys priority to motorists and as such you're just putting your life in danger by going "stuff it, I'm going".
But absolutely major cycleways having to stop at every cross street and driveway is so poor. One of my main pieces of feedback to the Centenary Motorway upgrade plan was to ensure the cycleway does not have at grade, deprioritised crossings anymore - that is, replace the crossings at Dandenong Road, Sinnamon Road, Fig Tree Pocket road, Witton Road. They did a good job with the Moggill Road bridge, and Sumners Road tunnel, they can do it for all of them as they go through.
Honestly, our transport beaurocrats and pollies need some serious questions being asked of them. We are lucky enough that in all of our capital cities we actually have decent rail corridors as we kept our networks in place while places in North America in many cases didnt.
This gives Aus cities a good platform to build our active and public transport off, problem is the rail corridors are too slow and inefficiently run, the housing stock around them too low density and bottlenecks are straining capacity so trains remain uncompetitive; buses and cycleways cant move to cross-country feeder routes to interchange with trains until we sort the frequency and speed issues out. And the politicians and transport beaurocrats lack a vision to change this landscape.
Yep, and it’s made even worse by the fact that (a) even once it goes green you’re given about 3 seconds window until it tells you not to cross by flashing angry red, effectively the design is that unless your already waiting at the light when it goes green you’re not supposed to be able to cross, imagine if green lights were designed that way for cars 😂, (b) It will tell cars they can cross directly into you at the same time you have a green
Yep, Mascot. Forever red.
Definitely an issue/bug. At night it never changed but for pedestrians and cars it did.
I see in the intersection that is the main focus has the median end before the pedestrian crossing. Yet another pedestrian hostile design element. Up here in Victoria, where there is a median and a pedestrian crossing, the median always extends beyond the pedestrian crossing.
Yes, this happens in my city. And I get the same BS responses.
On even had the nerve to claim digging up what was a continuous path to put in 2 zebra crossing & a beg button that makes you wait for EVER, was an "improvement" for pedestrians & cyclists
There's a traffic light timed like this less than a minute walk from my nearest train station, it's absolute insanity
got done with 3 $550 dollar fines for 'endangering the public' by crossing with pedestrians on my bicycle in the CBD :( i also wasn't wearing a helmet i'll cop that one fair enough, that one was only $150... but fuck me i wasn't endangering anyone
What? You're allowed to ride across a pedestrian crossing. Or do you mean you turned across a crossing with a green light (like turn left)?
@@ChrisCoxCycling no it was on the main street in the cbd and instead of waiting with the cars at the red light i crossed while they were still red (no pedestrians, they already crossed, and the cars were just waiting for the light to go green)
Brisbane is the worst for this. It's bad enough when cars are actually using the intersection, but requiring you to wait when no one is even using the intersection is a crime against humanity.
Hey Chris, did you call them out for lying? How long does a pedestrian need to wait if the need to get to the diagonal side? And people wonder why bicycle riders run red lights and ride in traffic
It honestly doesn't make any difference. Talking to engineers is like being in 1984. 2+2=5
You got your go at the end of the cycle. The cars that were turning when you first hit the button were next to go after it was your go. The light completed a cycle. If you notice traffic lights always work in an order. Sometimes an order is skipped if no cars have pulled up on that side or if no one has pressed a pedestrian button.
If there is cars and pedestrians constantly coming from all angles the means the lights will change in a certain order. So everyone does wait the same.
You conveniently pressed the button as those cars were turning right. The video is pointless because you are made to wait in order like all other sides of the intersection 😢. Oh well if this fills your day good for you 🥳
I ain't reading all that. But congrats, or commiserations, whatever.
With low traffic, how can they refere to cycles? The programing should just jump to the next user who needs to proceed…
Exactly! During high traffic times it makes sense to have a more timed approach to keep various flows moving.
Out of peak times when there is little traffic, it needs to be demand responsive. Not just defaulted to an even longer time cycle.
car supremacy is on full force in all american and canadian cities, people are totally addicted to cars and they get very aggressive and dangerously misbehaved when they see pedestrians or cyclists getting more than cars in very very few situation on streets. car supremacists should be controlled in all societies, they are dangerous to safety of people and cities
Just go through and don’t wait for nonexistent traffic. Problem solved
But but but, a motoron might see me and then go "see, cyclists don't obey the road rules!" 😏
So the lesson is get a car.
At least this comment was succinct...
@@ChrisCoxCycling LOL Gen X I don't think so. You're a classic boomer.
The car's only advantage, other than climate controlled isolation is the ability to allow other modes of traffic to pass by and still make the destination in time. If cars have to constantly stop for other cars, school buses and construction, what's adding peds and cyclists to the mix really going to do?
Bingo. Very little. And the positive feedback of encouraging more cycling and walking trips instead of driving improves travel time for all modes
Incorrect. Cars move people who pay rego. We should move to a user pays model where pedestrians pay a fee each time they cross a road
Lol 😆
If cyclists and pedestrians were charged rego at the same rate as cars, the rego costs would be negative, meaning the transport department would have to pay them. Which would result in an increase in car rego to cover the costs.
Personally, I'd be totally up for being paid to cycle if that's what drivers want.
Cars move far more than people who pay rego. The rego payer is probably the owner who is most likely also the driver.
They also move the bludgers in the other seats too. Those people should also pay some kind of road tax from the moment they're born, and by the time they are in the workforce, they will be in debt up to their eyeballs.
Rego doesn’t pay for that infrastructure, taxes do. So everyone should have equal priority.
If I have a car do I need to drive 3 streets away? No. In that situation I am a pedestrian.
Agreed.
It's not prioritizing cars over people. Because in those cars there are PEOPLE! The cars aren't driving around empty
1 person in a car is a waste of space, energy and unnecessary pollution. And most cars only ever carry the driver. Most inefficient way to get around the city... well, until traffic engineers decided to prioritise them over human beings walking.
@@ChrisCoxCycling stop acting so high and mighty just because you're too broke to afford a car
Lol 🤦♂️
But they are getting priority over other people…
Is this the "car lives matter" argument?
I don't think your methodology of simply measuring the time cars wait (starting form when they arrived) works. As a pedestrian, you have to have to manually push the button, so it's immediately clear what your wait time is. You don't know exactly when the algorithm's equivalent to the "button press" occurs for the cars. That would be like saying if another pedestrian walked up 65 seconds after you pressed the button and then crossed with you, that that counts as 5 second wait time for pedestrians.
I waited 70 seconds. Every car combined waited 54 seconds. That's a simple fact. You can try and rationalise it all you like, but this is car centric traffic "engineering" at its most basic. It's a car first approach, and it makes walkability poor.
@Chris Cox because there was 6 times more car traffic. So yes they should get priority since there's so much more of them and only 1 of you
All the cars that Chris counted arrived after Chris pushed the button and they all left before him. Maybe the algorithm needs to change.
@@hustla818 there are 10 times more pedestrians at certain lights in the city but they don’t get priority. Think about it.
@hustla818 do you like being stuck in car traffic?
I think bigger traffic should always get priority, a train doesn't need to wait for cars so why should cars wait for a pedestrian? Also, having the cars wait more adds to pollution.
As the great Luke Skywalker once said, "amazing, every word of what you just said was wrong".
@@ChrisCoxCycling Ahh yes, a fictional quote suits the fictional world you are living in.
Nothing of what I said was wrong mate, I spoke two truths and my opinion.
I am from the Netherlands, people say it's the best country for cyclists. Everyone at least owns a bike here, a lot own 2 or more. You should come and visit sometime.
Personally I only use my bicycle when I'm having a drink at my destination. Technically that's not legal but it's tolerated because it keeps people from driving drunk.
@@rafox66 Chris is the stereotypical cyclist. Entitled af and thinks he's more important then everybody on the road
Odd. Here you are saying cars and everything bigger should have priority and yet I'm entitled af. Sounds like a case of car brain, fellas
@@hustla818 Yeah I see that now, tried to have a normal discussion but it turns out there's nothing of value that his helmet is protecting.