General > General Technical Chat
some USA states replaces trafic lights with flags
james_s:
You'd think that, however for whatever reason living in a dense city tends to be far more expensive, it never made any sense to me but you can typically get a detached house in the suburbs for the price of a smaller condominium in a high rise in the city. To each their own but I like the suburbs, they tend to be isolated from the hustle, bustle, noise and crime of the cities, and it's not a big deal to take a car to a park & ride or city center. The USA is huge and spread out so you pretty much need a car anyway, it would take hours to get from one city to another by transit, the way it's set up the bus only really works to go between the city and the suburbs or from one part of the city to another. There are parks in many of our suburbs, there's one just around the corner from my house. I can also walk from here to the downtown area of the small city I live on the edge. In practice I usually drive though because if I go somewhere I'm often picking up a bunch of stuff I don't want to carry or I'm in a hurry. I can walk in 45 minutes or I can hop in my car and get there in 5. I will say I can't stand those cookie cutter developments where all the houses are identical. My suburb is from the era where there were dozens of plans to choose from and most of the houses are different. There is one other on my street that is identical but a mirror image of mine but the rest are different. There is no HOA so the houses are all different colors with all different landscaping, I like it.
thm_w:
I hate crosswalks, that flag one definitely takes the cake for worst crosswalk though.
Problem is its so damn expensive to install stop lights, around $150,000 here.
Recently person was hit and killed near a fairly popular crossing with no crosswalk, thankfully they realized painting lines on the road would do f-all, so they put in a solar powered crosswalk station. I believe the cost of those is around $20,000. Panels are fairly small, maybe 40x40cm on each side of the road, should be more than enough power if they have a decent sized LiFe battery.
Would like to see more of the solar lights being used.
xrunner:
I read somewhere a couple years ago, that the pedestrian crossing button on many streets doesn't do anything at all - it isn't wired in. It's simply there to give the pedestrian some "sense of control" so they will wait after they push the button (thinking the system has accepted their request) and not cross early. :-//
SiliconWizard:
What's the point?
thm_w:
--- Quote from: xrunner on September 13, 2022, 11:15:21 pm ---I read somewhere a couple years ago, that the pedestrian crossing button on many streets doesn't do anything at all - it isn't wired in. It's simply there to give the pedestrian some "sense of control" so they will wait after they push the button (thinking the system has accepted their request) and not cross early. :-//
--- End quote ---
--- Quote from: SiliconWizard on September 13, 2022, 11:46:49 pm ---What's the point?
--- End quote ---
Yes, some are some aren't.
If the light is on a fixed cycle, its going to change in X minutes anyway, and that X minutes might be specifically synced to optimize traffic. So having the button change the timing would not be good.
Having the walk button there means, if they wanted to change the button response at a later date they could. Probably reduces the chances of people running across too, if they think their press sped things up?
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/ever-wonder-why-this-button-doesn-t-always-work-we-ve-got-the-answer-1.3832244
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