Crossing Hampton At Elizabeth
Four times per year I visit my doctor on South Hampton, 45-minutes each way via public transit to/from downtown. As a regular transit user and pedestrian I actually enjoy the time. What I don’t enjoy is crossing Hampton upon arrival.
The last five years I’ve taken MetroBus to my doctor — except maybe 2-3 times when my husband wasn’t using our car. So at least 15 times I’ve crossed Hampton at Elizabeth — West to East. The bus stop is in the 24th Ward, my doctor is in the 10th Ward.
Looking at older versions of Google’s Street View I know the pedestrian & traffic signals were added sometime between September 2007 and October 2009. The bus stop and curb ramps were all existing in September 2007.
Crosswalk and pedestrian signals, so what is there to complain about? Plenty.
The issue is the timing of pedestrian signals. First I need to cross the SB lanes of Hampton to the center median — not s problem — a walk is given when Elizabeth Ave traffic gets a green light. The walk signal might require pressing the activation button — I don’t remember. I reach the NB lanes og Hampton just as the pedestrian signal switches to don’t walk. While it would be nice to cross without having to wait I do realize the median is wide.
NB traffic gets a green light soon. After a while they get a red light. I should get a walk signal now that NB traffic has com to a stop, right? No, that’s too logical. The NB traffic has been stopped because SB Hampton traffic has a left turn arrow. No traffic is crossing the crosswalk but the pedestrian signal on both directions of the NB Hampton lanes says “don’t walk.”No conflict at all — the city just didn’t think about the user or thought about it and didn’t care.
Weeks ago I mentioned the city’s bike/ped Twitter account while venting about this issue. The reply was
E-W peds conflict w N-S traffic…no time to cross if wired for xtra xing during SBL, safest to run w E-W traffic. Plenty of time to cross.
Again, not enough time to cross all of Hampton at once. There must be a better solution, but I know the traffic engineer in charge of pedestrian infrastructure isn’t the person to figure it out.
It might take some new wires, but the pedestrian signals for NB should act independent of those for the SB lanes. If so, pedestrians wouldn’t get stuck in the median for a complete cycle of the traffic signals. This should have been the case when these were installed.
— Steve Patterson