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Comment by raldi | Hacker News Reader

I'm not following re: "pedestrians only get to cross once". In traditional signaling, each crosswalk is also usable by pedestrians once per cycle; no?

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The standard cycle has 2 phases:

1. Cars & pedestrians can cross one direction

2. Cars & pedestrians can cross other direction

"Scramble" has 3:

1. Cars can cross one direction

2. Cars can cross other direction

3. Pedestrians can cross any direction

The scramble I've used has the following phases:

1. Cars and pedestrians can cross one direction

2. Cars and pedestrians can cross other direction

3. Pedestrians can cross any direction

That would be perfect. In Quebec city it is illegal to follow cars in the direction of the green light. If there is a pedestrian signal, you must call for it and wait which makes it awfully long and inconvenient. Takes about 30sec to a min before we can cross most intersection but hey "its safer" they say.

Does that mean cars can never turn at that intersection?

If an intersection is busy enough with pedestrian traffic the left and right turns are impossible without a dedicated turn phase I think the traffic engineers can handle that slight modification. The US has a plethora of lights where turns are made explicit with green/red arrows. As a pedestrian I am not supposed to cross when the turning traffic has a green arrow as the walk sign is always the red hand.

A full cycle of the lights involves each direction of vehicle traffic getting a green light once.

In a "scramble", pedestrians would only get one total walk signal per cycle of the lights. In a non-"scramble", pedestrians get multiple walk signals depending on direction, just like vehicles do. For example, if a north-south road intersects an east-west road, in a non-"scramble" there will be one walk signal for pedestrians going east-west who cross the north-south road, and one walk signal for pedestrians going north-south who cross the east-west road. Thus pedestrians would get a total of two walk signals per cycle.

Sure, under a traditional cycle, pedestrians get two opportunities, but each is for only half the crosswalks.

I would rather clearly own the intersection once than risk getting hit by some moron turning left twice.

Right -- you also have to consider left-turn cycles when the cross traffic is stopped but pedestrian signals will still be indicating "Don't Walk", and right-turn-on-red where you're counting on drivers seeing you in the crosswalk.

Having one cycle exclusively for pedestrians, where there's no confusion, seems safer.

At least in the scramble I've used in Toronto, there's actually 3 walk signals: 1 for each direction (what a regular crosswalk would have) + 1 where you can go in any direction (and all cars face a red signal).

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