Seemingly small changes in city policy and provincial law
have combined to make a very large difference in how people walk about
town.
On the city side, when new crossing lights are installed at
intersections, they are now programmed such that the pedestrian
don’t-walk/walk signal only changes if first activated by the
pedestrian pushing a button.
On the provincial side is 2007’s Bill 7, which amended the motor
vehicle code. That bill is most famously known for its Clause 13, which
criminalized Halifax’s squeegee kids, but its Clause 6 affects far more
people—that piece of the legislation states simply that “pedestrian
traffic facing [a don’t-walk] signal, either flashing or solid, shall
not start to cross the roadway in the direction of the signal.”
In many cases, the pedestrian arrives at an intersection with plenty
of time to cross, but just after the traffic light has turned green; in
order to get a “walk” signal, the pedestrian must wait an entire light
cycle, but cars arriving after the pedestrian are free to proceed.
Many pedestrians cross anyway—with the green traffic light but
against the don’t-walk pedestrian light—which was perfectly legal
before Bill 7 passed, but now violates the law.
In effect, the changes have taken the right-of-way away from
pedestrians and given it to vehicular traffic instead. Further, many
additional minutes are added to a pedestrian’s commute.
“I wouldn’t agree with that,” says Ken Reashor. “When the pedestrian
approaches they push it, and the next available light turns green.”
Reashor is Halifax’s one-man traffic authority and is the ultimate
authority for all street- and traffic-related decisions in HRM. For
example, it was Reashor’s decision to start enforcing the winter
parking ban and he vetoed an attempt to widen the sidewalks on Spring
Garden Road.
Reashor explains that he is responsible for the change in city
crosswalk policy, but that both the new push-button pedestrian light
and the change in the provincial motor vehicle code were recommended by
the Crosswalk Safety Task Force.
Reashor co-chaired the task force, which was created by mayor Peter
Kelly and premier Rodney MacDonald after two girls were killed at
crosswalks in Dartmouth.
That group had 11 members: five are traffic engineers; two are
police officers; one is the former registrar of motor vehicles; one a
member of the seniors’ safe driving committee; one an injury prevention
expert with the province and one an academic who specializes in
decision making and risk-taking among children and people with learning
disabilities.
There was not a pedestrian advocate on the task force devoted to
pedestrian safety.
Reashor shrugs off complaints that the task force was weighted
against pedestrians. “We’re all pedestrians,” he states.
“That’s only a percentage of the time they have to wait,” he says.
“It depends on the randomness of your arrival. It depends on where
you’re going. You can actually cross the street in the opposite
direction and depending on where you’re heading—those options are
available. Not everybody in every case is necessarily delayed.
“There’s a balance between giving the right of way to pedestrians
and cars,” he adds. “The statistics are showing that delaying a
motorist unnecessarily if there’s no pedestrian—and what happens is
if there’s no pedestrian and the walk signal is up, then we cannot give
the additional time to other movements, because the walk cycle requires
a longer period of time. This all comes back to impatience of drivers,
impatience of pedestrians. It’s a balance of the two.”
Evidently, most pedestrians either are unaware they’re breaking the
law, or don’t care. Monday afternoon, at the new pedestrian crossing
light at Trollope Street and Bell Road it took just 12 minutes for 10
different people, all adults, to break the law.
Illegal crossings are also a regular sight at the new pedestrian
crossing light at Thistle Street and Victoria Road in Dartmouth, with
many incidents of pedestrians and motorists flipping each other off and
the like.
Motorists, for their part, don’t have to push a button.
This article appears in Mar 12-18, 2009.
I am actually in the process of reading a fairly interesting book called Traffic, written by Tom Vanderbilt. Pretty interesting look at the way traffic moves and how drivers act and react,how different rules work in different places for different demographics, etc. In it he mentions the traffic authority in LA and in NY. Both seem to find pedestrians to be a pain in the butt when it comes to trying to keep the traffic flowing smoothly through out these larger cities. And in some cases, in those cities, the button for the pedestrian to push to make the light change for them to walk…doesn’t even work! While I agree with what you have said in your article, I think the MOST important thing is keeping everyone safe on the roads. If it means cars having to wait, so be it, if a pedestrian has to wait, so be it. It’s whatever works best to keep the majority of people safer.( I am sure this includes the emissions from the cars while idling too) Now if we all could only obey all these rules when driving or walking, it’d be a driver/pedestrian utopia!!
People in Halifax tend to not look when crossing the street. I walk an hour a day in the city and am always blown away when the person in front of me barges into a crossing without looking to see if traffic is coming. Motorists here tend to do an OK job looking for pedestrians but a very poor job looking for cyclists, so it’s up to pedestrians/cyclists to be more proactive regardless of whether they need to push a button or not.
I wrote to the city a few weeks ago about this. One of the points I brought up was the fact that many of the buttons were inaccessible due to snow and ice at that time. Reashor replied to my e-mail, basically regurgitating what you’ve reported here. He did not offer any suggestion as to what a pedestrian should do if it is impossible to reach the button.
Bitchy – have you checked out this Wired Magazine article?
Roads Gone Wild
No street signs. No crosswalks. No accidents. Surprise: Making driving seem more dangerous could make it safer.
http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/12.12/t…
cracka– thanks for the link. It’s very interesting!
It’s a fascinating article. Just imagine what that type of approach could do to Argyle street or Quinpool Road.
If there was any law enforcement happening around traffic signals, this all might be different. We have gone from a city where people slowed for a yellow light, or a pedestrian crossing Quinpool road in the middle of the street at rush hour, to a city where most drivers gun it for all the yellow and the first few moments of the red. Consequences have all but disappeared for drivers. I am not fan of the Traffic Authority, Ken is even worse than Dave was. Engineers think that engineering will solve everything. Do not look to the Traffic Authority to support changing society to be less car dependent, they are never going to see that as a priority.
Hey, Waye Mason is commenting here. The Coast has arrived!
Traffic engineers have only one interest, moving vehicles as fast as possible.
Every intesection is a pedestrian crossing according to the law. That is so 1910. Considering our towns and cities are built on a grid system that means you can see a pedestrian crosiing a busy road every 200-300 feet. This ection of the MVA should be eliminated and crosswalks installed at longer intervals, signalised and brightly illuminated. Police should aggressively ticket jay walkers and drivers.
Now we have stupid councillors wanting a crawl speed in school zones. Kids spend most of their lives outside school so they need to be aware of traffic safety 24/7.
Just watch what kids do when they get out at lunch time or end of the day. Some cross at lights, others cross at an intersection and others just amble across the road wherever they feel like ( I usually don’t give way.
Too many crosswalks are in stupid locations, put there because some councillor wants to placate 10 voters. If you ask Reashor nicely he’ll put one up when he knows it is not the right place all because some parents don’t want their little darlings to walk another 200 feet to a crosswalk with good sightlines and flat surface – think crosswalk at Laurier and Woodland Avenue – BAD site, and Frederick and Woodland – GOOD site.
Just wait until someone gets hit at Laurier. Tim. I think you should ask Mr Reashor if Laurier meets national standards and when it was put there and why. Accident waiting to happen.
One annoying section of street, Alderney Drive near the library, has become increasingly dangerous, probably as a result of tweaking the light cycle to make it easier for cars to speed through the three consecutive intersections with traffic lights. Not only do pedestrians now have to press a signal button, every one of the signals seems to operate differently. One has a count down and also gives a long time to cross in one of the directions, adequate in the other; the middle one has a yellow button that I suspect is purely decorative, and you have to wait through two cycles of the other lights before this one changes; the third one, at the foot of Portland Street, is the most problematic. Since the changes to the middle light described above, I constatly see cars failing to slow down when the light changes, speeding through red lights. If I see this happening so frequently during my very short time in the neighbourhood each day, how often is it really occurring? That light is one of those where if you miss the change, you have to wait through a second cycle. As this is the corner many ferry and bus passengers cross at you would have thought more effort would be made to make it a pedestrian-friendly intersection. Those of us who cross there regularly generally have given up obeying the law. We would waste far too much of our time. Press the button, yes, but cross whenever it is safe. By the way, I suppose it is easier to sic the police on the jaywalkers, not the drivers who run the red light, so I’m not expecting good changes here.
Thanks cracka. Good article…insightful!
While I think this is stupid, I also think it’s irrelevant. You would have to have a cop on the corner watching me cross in order to see that I crossed while the man was flashing. How else would they prove that I didn’t just cross the second before he started flashing, which is what I would say if I were fined? And if drivers are now going to become more distracted trying to exact their revenge on pedestrians by taking down details of each one who crosses on a flashing don’t walk symbol when they were trying to turn left, then we have just made the streets even less safe.
And bullshit that all of the panel members are pedestrians, I’d like to see how much they each walk in a day.
Ugh… You’re fucking kidding me! More of these stupid things? When I moved to Bedford, I was suprised by how walkable I generally found it, with one exception–
THE PUSH-BUTTON PEDESTRIAN LIGHTS DON’T WORK PROPERLY!
There are a few intersections on the Bedford Highway with these push-button crosswalk lights already. And maybe once out of every 5 times I use them, they actually give me permission to walk.
When traffic flow down the highway makes crossing opportunities rare, it sucks to press a “walk” button and watch the lights change for cars but not pedestrians. Because the next change in the lights won’t be for another five minutes, and god knows if the button will “take” this time either.
So I guess my usual practice of walking without the White Man’s permission when this happens will now be against the law???
Another thing that could be considered in certain spots in HRM is scramble intersections. Not a new concept by any means, widely used in many other places. I’ve used a few myself.
There are a number of spots where city planners should consider overpasses or tunnels.
Finally, what *is* the situation with respect to jaywalking in Nova Scotia? All the Motor Vehicle Act has to say is that if a pedestrian proposes to cross a roadway anywhere other than in a crosswalk (marked or implicit) that vehicles have the right of way. In other words, considering only the MVA means that a pedestrian can cross anywhere. Now, I think that HRM has a jaywalking bylaw, but just try and find that in any of the bylaws on the city’s website…
I mention jaywalking because in many situations it is absolutely the safest way for pedestrians to cross a roadway, and because when properly done it is more convenient for both motorists and pedestrians. As far as safety goes, of all the pedestrians that you hear about in HRM being nailed by cars, how many are hit in crosswalks and how many are hit outside crosswalks? Apparently many more in crosswalks, yet no small number of people jaywalk…
My tiny little protest to these devices is to push those buttons whenever I encounter them, whether I mean to cross the street or not. If what Reashor says is true, and the light stays green longer if the pedestrian crossing is activated, then every time I activate that signal I effectively thwart the city’s plan to facilitate vehicle traffic flow at the expense of pedestrian traffic. I encourage everyone who hates these things to do the same.
I come from a land where pedestrians have always had the right-of-way simply because in the case of car-vs-pedestrian the car wins 100% of the time. Pedestrians need to be protected from vehicular traffic and NOT the other way around. Compare how far you can travel in a car in a 30 second period with how far you can travel on foot. The car can wait… each and every time. Take a patience pill, get a coping skill or, better, go be a pedestrian for a day if you think waiting for one to cross the street is going to fuck your day.
Reashor is nothing but an irresponsible power monger blatantly laying down law without regard for the desire of people who pay his wage and without regard for pedestrians. I wonder how this law will turn into yet another cash grab for the municipality as is being done with the winter parking ban. Fuck the majority, he says… he thinks he’s God and I think he should get a hold of himself.
Thank God! A voice of reason. These stupid bloody buttons are absolutely moronic; why don’t the green pedestrian signals come up automatically like they used to? I sure as hell am not going to wait.
Why don’t the police do something about drivers running lights and talking on their phones; you can stand at any major intersection in the city and in 5 minutes see any number of violations.
Inconsiderate pedestrians are another problem; witness the number of fools (particularly in the South End) who stroll into traffic without looking. A car doing 50 cannot stop on dime and unless you’re on a crosswalk a car has right-of-way. Jay walk all you want just don’t be an idiot.
Realist in Dartmouth, kay, and lovehatehalifax: agree with you all 100%.
Those push-button systems cost a lot of money, I’m sure. In the old days, there were none, and the white man came on for every cycle. Sometimes only for 5 seconds at a busy intersection, but that’s enough to start walking and comfortably finish before the red light. In any case pedestrians were allowed to exercise their own judgment regarding whether it was safe to cross. Heaven forbid that we allow that anymore!
We should save the money on these systems, and spend it on an improved bus/mass transit system instead: less cars, less problem.
Yes, as I understand it by the Motor Vehicle Act, pedestrians always have the right of way at any (express or implied) crosswalk. Period.
Personally, I use my head. I cross when it’s safe, and don’t when it’s not. (I will admit confusion about what to do when a driver, often the last in a long line of cars, and with plenty of time to proceed ahead of me, stops to let me cross… even if I’m jaywalking! Thanks, but just move on already! It’s more dangerous to add unpredictability to your movements (there’s cars coming the other way… is he stopping? Should I go? Should I back up? Crunch time! Oh he’s stopped — pick up my heels and leg it across the road…)
I would heartily welcome more police presence to ticket both impatient drivers and reckless jaywalkers. Please give me a ticket for starting to walk when the white man has gone out; I will take it to court, and win.
I too come from a land (Ontario) where drivers actually stop for pedestrians. In Ontario we hear about how people on the east coast are so friendly and kind. NOT. Drivers in Halifax are the rudest, selfish most hostile people I’ve EVER encountered. People here, especially in the south end it seems, drive like idiots. They accelerate really fast, only to get to a red light. I am really surprised that there aren’t more accidents than there are. I think people here have severe inferiority issues and take out their hostility on pedestrians. I’ve almost been run down several times. And the funny thing is when drivers run you down here, they make no attempt at apology. I find people here so self-absorbed and inconsiderate it actually blows my mind sometimes.