The Greens’ Caroline Le Couteur is celebrating changes to the pedestrian signal timing on the corner of Northbourne and Macarthur/Wakefield:
ACT Greens TAMS spokesperson, Caroline Le Couteur MLA, has congratulated the Canberra Pedestrian Forum for their successful campaign to implement ‘auto-start’ for pedestrian crossings at the intersection of Northbourne, Wakefield and Macarthur Avenues.
The ‘auto-start’ system gives the pedestrian a green signal at the same time as the vehicle signal rather than a delayed response to a button request.
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“Pedestrian signals at this intersection have been retimed so that pedestrians are now three times as likely to meet a green signal, and are then able to cross safely without delay.
According to the Pedestrian Forum, prior to these changes, thirty percent of pedestrians were crossing midblock rather than using the crossings at Macarthur Avenue, and forty percent were crossing against red signals. These crossings are eight times as dangerous as crossing at a green signal.
“Before the changes you had a red signal for up to two minutes, even when you had a fifty second gap when you could cross safely. Many people ignored the red signal and crossed anyway.
As a regular user of this intersection I can’t say I’ve noticed the difference.
As I’ll still cross when I think it’s safe the light being green more will mean I’m crossing with the green man more often, but the correlation won’t have any causation.
Caroline would like to see this change made more widely.
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