That’s actually the way it works in the Netherlands. The lights there in general are a lot more flexible. There are no phases, only during which movements can run. Instead, multiple movements can run at once, as long as they don’t conflict with each other. And movements are combined based on the road users present.

Looking forward to hearing a well reasoned reply as a counterpoint to this blog post 🙂

> they need the commonsense function indicating that the lights will grant a walk cycle

I agree; this is an obvious missing piece of functionality.

> Many lights serve oneway streets, which could be partially automated to match the stopped traffic, but are programmed so pedestrians must always press and wait regardless.

I’m interested in methods for mapping & advocating for change of bad signal timing. My understanding is currently timing data is not open data unfortunately. Let me know if you hear of crowdsourced ways of measuring timing data!

Thanks very much for your European insight, interesting food for thought.

I was blown away on my first day in Sydney when I immediately noticed the prioritisation of cars on crossings. I expected a European city but felt Sydney was nore like mix between what I had experienced in US and EU.

In many European cities they use solutions that indicate clearly by sound and light that the crossing is in automatic mode or has been activated by another pedestrian before you, and there is no need to touch the button “just in case”.

Most of these units don’t offer a clear feedback of whether your touch/push was registered. Leading to a popular “give it a few more” style of activating them.
The floppy button often feels like it’s about to fall off and can’t possibly be in working order.

The fact that the design encourages the use by feet came as a suprise to me since I never considered kicking them myself, and I feel it’s another aspect of its poor design -> peaple encouraged to touch the same surface that some people apparently kick with their dog poo covered shoes !?

From my previous experience as a pedestrian in some other western countries I assumed these aussi buttons are just an old but once popular antiquated design thats surely going to be replaced soon (since many of them feel “broken” with the button flopping about).
I was very surprised that Aussies are quite proud of them and they seem to be here to stay.

And then there’s the frequent poor placement or lack of the buttons themselves, sometimes hidden on a pole well away from the actual area to cross.

Also, unsurprisingly, Sydney signals are nearly always programmed to make pedestrians wait by default despite the local traffic or road conditions. Many lights serve oneway streets, which could be partially automated to match the stopped traffic, but are programmed so pedestrians must always press and wait regardless.

Going even further, you could make all the vehicle signals red by default, all the pedestrian signals green by default and only switch the vehicle signals to green when a vehicle is detected, after switching the relevant pedestrian lights to red and after an appropriate delay.