a midway bikelog

late night traffic light studies

The maddening thing about traffic signal sensors is that, according to the city engineers that i’ve heard from, they should work as well for bicycles as for cars, it’s just a matter of properly setting the sensitivity. In my experience riding a local stretch of road at all hours of the day and night, the sensors are being over-ridden or ignored during traffic peaks yet seem to work fine in the middle of the night.

Twice recently i’ve ridden along a stretch of road (Hamline, between University and Grand) where the lights all changed to green as i approached, without even slowing, at around 2-3am. Riding that part of the same road during the daytime, even directly over the sensors, doesn’t seem to have any effect on the light change interval. Once was a nice coincidence, but having it happen twice, and through multiiple lights, makes me think that the technology is fine but that cycling traffic (and pedestrians, based on how effective the walk signal buttons work) are deprecated to the point of being ignored most of the day.

It makes legislation like this seem a lot more reasonable, though that would be most applicable in exactly the situations where the signals seem to work best: when there’s no traffic to compete with. Still, I couldn’t count how how many times i’ve sat waiting to get across Hiawatha Ave, the crossing button utterly useless as the minutes tick by without a car on the road. I know i can get myself across, but it would be nice to know that there wouldn’t be a chance of a ticket waiting for me on the other side of the street.