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Comment by jccalhoun | Hacker News Reader

Most of these stories use large cities like NYC or London as an example. I wonder though how common it is that the crosswalk buttons don't do anything in the rest of the world or even other cities in the USA. I often wonder if pressing the crosswalk button does anything when I wait for the crossing light. Of course, if we knew which ones worked and which didn't then they wouldn't be as effective.

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Something like 6-7 years back from now, I was working as a guy who distributes free newspapers on the street in Kraków, Poland, and my assigned street corner was next to an intersection with those crosswalk buttons. I decided to check out the story about placebo buttons then, so I took measurements how long it takes for the pedestrian green to turn on depending on whether or not someone pressed the button. It turned out that the button cut down the waiting time by about 20 seconds, which was at most 50% reduction AFAIR.

So sometimes they may work, but the change may be subtle enough to be easy missed.

I think it was Melbourne, Australia where I experienced this, but there were no automatic cycles for the crosswalk lights - they don't go green unless you press the button. Even after learning that, I would still forget sometimes that the buttons weren't just a placebo and would find myself getting frustrated at how long I was having to wait.

Was that at the town end of Starowislna near the old newspaper offices? I may have passed you a few times; didn't accept the paper because I can't read Polish.

It was on the other side of the Vistula river, near the Korona sports club, on Kalwaryjska street.

From reading the comments here I get the impression that such crossings are only at intersections. In Drammen, Norway, where I work, we have in addition crossings that are not at intersections and the only time the lights change in favour of the pedestrian is when you press the button. In addition there are some at intersections that also require a button press because the one way system means that there is never a conflict between vehicles.

In Salt Lake City, most of the crosswalk buttons work. During low traffic times, some buttons even immediately change the lights.

I suspect these are much more common in cities, simply because they're more likely to have the kind of intersections where a fixed cycle makes sense. For example, if you have a crossing over a one way section of road, or if the crossing is busy enough that there will almost always be pedestrians waiting.

Outside of cities, you often have less frequently used crossings over main roads, where a button controlled crossing makes much more sense than a fixed cycle.

How a light works can change also. Sometimes it will fall back on a dumb rotation if the sensors are not working.

Also it may make sense to rely on sensors/buttons when there are few people, but once your city gets too big and has constant foot traffic, fixing the sensors may not be worth it.

Can't speak for anywhere else, but here in Baltimore I've never observed them to actually do anything. But we all just jaywalk across roads at whatever point happens to be most convenient for our purposes, so it doesn't matter anyway.

As someone that comes from a smaller town in the UK (I went into detail in another comment) I find it really weird when I go to London and nobody presses the buttons.

In Cincinnati, many of our crosswalk buttons at intersections that trigger automatically, which are most of them, have small signs "push button for audio only."

The ones up and down Castro St. in Mountain View don't do anything.

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