Do crosswalk buttons actually do anything? Many people have sneaking suspicions that pushing the button for the walk sign has no effect at all. But would they really waste all that money installing them if they didn’t do anything? Anybody know about this?
Where I live, most stop lights are actuated by sensors in the road. The light won’t switch if no cars ever show up. The crosswalk button works the same way, plus it controls the amount of time the light stays greed (longer than for a single car at the intersection) PLUS it triggers the “walk” light to go on-- it won’t do so just for a green light.
Pushing the bottom multiple times doesn’t make the light turn faster, although it might make you feel better. 
All of intersections near my work place will not light the cross indications unless you press the button. So near me they definitely do something.
Adding onto the “light wont activate unless” cases, there are intersections will extend the light cycle in the direction you’re crossing (where it would otherwise be a shorter cycle as that cross-street is a secondary road) to afford pedestrians ample time to cross.
Presumably they reduce jaywalking, since some people will be more inclined to wait on the sidewalk if they have a button to push.
Here in San Diego, some crosswalks have buttons that work differently than any i’ve ever seen anywhere else.
Not only do they ensure that the walk sign activates at the change of lights, and also extend the duration of the lights on some intersections, but some of the ones here work immediately.
There is a crosswalk not far from my house where, if you arrive at the intersection after the light has gone green (but the crosswalk light has not activated), you can press the button and, if there is sufficient time left in the light cycle, the Walk sign will activate immediately.
I’ve seen quite a few like this in the city, and San Diego is the only place where i’ve seen such immediate results from a crosswalk button; everywhere else i’ve been, if you don’t push the button before the change of lights, you have to wait until the next cycle to get the Walk sign.
once and only once did I use one that actually would change the lights to your left and right to red (and give you a walk sign) if you pressed the button and there was no one coming.
Yes, I did say turn the sides to red. The light in front of you would not turn green unless a car came up.
Thanks for the link, but Cecil’s article isn’t very conclusive. The answer seems to be no, except late at night.
also, i think traffic management technology has changed a little bit since 1993.
They give you DeQuervain’s Syndrome and tendinitis if you keep pressing them.
Here in San Francisco there are a number of corners downtown that have buttons that people think are for changing the light. What they are actually for is making different sounds when you have the right-of-way to cross vs. when you do not. If you press the button, it will make these sounds for a while; if no-one presses the button for a while (I don’t know how long, a few minutes I suppose), it will stop making the sounds.
I don’t think half the people that I see at these corners has this figured out.
Roddy
Sure they do something. They give the pedestrian a sense of control, a sense that his or her actions matter. Of course, in the grand scheme of things life is meaningless. Nothing really matters, so spake Queen, but it’s the small things in life that make a difference. Clearly anyone can see that.
In Hawaii, they work fine.
Some do, some don’t. One intersection I cross regularly installed one with a push button a couple decades ago and it worked. Then they changed it so that the Walk signal was part of the cycle whether the button was pushed or not, then they went back to the pushbutton and how they have again made it part of the cycle, although the button remains. Another one near me has a pushbutton whose only effect is to activate the Walk sign, but doesn’t change the fact that cars have the light to turn through the crosswalk, although they are supposed to yield (and, to be fair, usually do).
So there is no set policy, which strikes as poor public policy.
They are like elevator buttons, the harder and more frequently you hit them the faster the elevator shows up.
The overwhelming majority of crosswalk buttons in my town are on the two major one-way streets. The third major street is our “Main Street”, which is two-way and has no crosswalk buttons (except at 2 or 3 major intersections), but has pedestrian signals that cycle in synch with the traffic signals.
The buttons on the one-ways work at night, but not during the day. The traffic lights on these streets are on a fixed cycle during the day. Because of traffic congestion problems they don’t want pedestrians breaking up that cycle, so the buttons are disabled. The walk/don’t walk signals cycle regularly along with the traffic signals.
From late night to early morning (don’t know the precise hours), the traffic lights on the one-ways switch to “always green”, and only change if there is a car stopped at the red on a cross street, or if a pedestrian pushes the button.
At the exceptional 2-3 major intersections on “Main Street” that have pedestrian buttons, the buttons don’t alter the traffic signal pattern, they simply cause the appropriate pedestrian signal to change to “walk” at the appropriate point in the regular light cycle. These are intersections with somewhat complex systems of left-turn lanes on “Main Street”, but none on the cross streets, and it might not be obvious when it’s safe to cross simply by watching the traffic lights.
(I didn’t drive for almost 15 years, so became intimately familiar with the system of pedestrian signals in my town.)