The in basket: Jeff who gave no last name says that while he
tried to cross Naval Avenue at Burwell Street in Bremerton one
afternoon, “I got to the intersection as the pedestrian signal was
in the middle of its countdown. I pressed the button expecting to
have to wait a full cycle, but as soon as the countdown reached
zero, the walk signal came up (again).
“I’m not familiar with how signals are set up, but it seems like a
programming change should allow the button to reset the countdown
if there will be time in the overall light cycle for pedestrians to
cross.
“After someone presses the button to cross, the white walking person (symbol) comes up with the traffic green. After a few seconds, the white walking person turns into the flashing red hand with the countdown. If a new person walks up and presses the button, nothing happens, the count down continues. As soon as the countdown hits zero, without pressing the button again, the white walking person comes back up.
“My question was why can’t pressing the button a second time allow the white walk signal to come back up without having to go through the whole count down.”
The out basket: I had never seen such a thing, in Bremerton or elsewhere, but it appears it can and does happen.
Jeff Collins of the Bremerton signal shop says, “The newer traffic signal controllers will allow a pedestrian call to be re-serviced if there are no other calls or if the current cycle has enough time left on that phase.
“Pressing the button repeatedly will not change how the signal operates,” he added. “Once the pedestrian call is placed (the button is pushed), it is locked into the controller and pressing the button again has no effect until after the walk is displayed, then pressing after walk is displayed will only lock the call in until the walk is displayed again.”
