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from the push,-pull,-swipe,-turn-and-Pong dept.
Late for work in Manhattan, you push the crosswalk button and curse silently at the slowness of the signal change. You finally get a green light, cross the street, arrive at the office, get in the elevator and hit the close door (>|<) button to speed things along. Getting out on your target floor, you find that hurrying has you a bit hot under the collar, so you reach for the thermostat to turn up the air conditioning.
Each of these seemingly disconnected everyday buttons you pressed may have something in common: it is quite possible that none of them did a thing to influence the world around you. Any perceived impact may simply have been imaginary, a placebo effect giving you the illusion of control.
In the early 2000s, New York City transportation officials finally admitted what many had suspected: the majority of crosswalk buttons in the city are completely disconnected from the traffic light system. Thousands of these initially worked to request a signal change but most no longer do anything, even if their signage suggests otherwise.
[...] Today, a combination of carefully orchestrated automation and higher traffic has made most of these buttons obsolete. Citywide, there are around 100 crosswalk buttons that still work in NYC but close to 1,000 more that do nothing at all. So why not take them down? Removing the remaining nonfunctional buttons would cost the city millions, a potential waste of already limited funds for civic infrastructure.
More examples are quoted in linked article, and some suggestions how tech can make our lives more pleasant while waiting - Pong anyone?.
-- submitted from IRC
(Score: 2, Informative) by Francis on Tuesday August 23 2016, @09:49PM
It depends on the intersection, sometimes the only effect they have is slightly elongating the walk signal that you're given, in which case you'd never know if it was doing anything at all. Other times it's mandatory to get a walk signal at all. Otherwise it just shows no walk perpetually.
The jackass that decided that second one was a good idea and then that you had to press the button prior to the light changing or get no permission at all deserves to be stuck on the wrong side of the street while bad things happen to his children.
(Score: 4, Informative) by Whoever on Wednesday August 24 2016, @03:38AM
That's only because the USA has dangerous traffic signal sequences. In many other countries, when the pedestrians can walk, no cars are allowed into the junction (from any direction). With this type of setup, you only want to signal for pedestrians to cross if there really are pedestrians waiting to cross.
(Score: 1) by Francis on Wednesday August 24 2016, @04:33AM
I've never seen that in the US. But that would cut down substantially on fatalities from people crossing in crosswalks being hit by traffic.
Obviously, that wouldn't do anything about people in uncontrolled intersection, but it would be something to fight for.
(Score: 1) by toddestan on Wednesday August 24 2016, @11:49PM
I'm fairly certain there's a bug in one of the lights close to where I live. It's one of those lights like the second type you mention that won't give the walk signal until the light changes. It's also a light where it's always green along the main road unless something triggers it to change, either because it senses a car waiting on the side street or someone pushes the walk button to cross the main road.
Anyway, if the light is green on the main road, and you are walking along the main road and push the button to cross the side street, it of course will not give the walk signal (though it certainly could). Furthermore, since it will only give the walk signal when the light changes green in the direction you want to go, it won't give the walk signal until the light cycles, but that won't happen until something triggers a cycle. So assuming you don't push the other walk button to get it to cycle, the only other solution is to wait until a car pulls up on the side street.
Like I say, I'm not certain it a bug because I can't observe the light's behavior in a controlled environment. But I've pushed the walk button, watched while it won't give the walk signal along the main road despite being green for over three minutes(!), until a car finally arrives on the side street which then makes the light cycle and finally it will give the walk signal when it turns green again. I don't usually have that kind of patience for lights that force me to wait a full cycle before giving me the walk signal. If it's green in the direction I want to go, I don't think it's about to change, and it's safe to do so I'll just cross against the signal.