The following was passed on to streets.mn, which is the response from officials about improving signal timings for Pedestrians on the Washington Avenue Transit Mall. “Balance” is the word used, not “Priority”. I assume pedestrians will continue to violate at will. Twelve seconds of useless wait is a long time in January.
They should just publicly acknowledge that the signals serve no propose, and mindful “jaywalking” is safe (as is done around any urban tramway in Europe) and we can all just continue ignoring this product of over engineering.
They should probably just take them all down.
I like to ride through there, but every time it’s a question of whether to stop for one or more useless signals that no one is waiting for and risk the wrath of omnipresent law enforcement or to follow courteous common sense.
“Pedestrian Mall”. Ha.
For my part it often seems safer to jaywalk alertly in some areas than to depend on drivers obeying the law. But I’m able-bodied and can move quickly.
The Washington Avenue “mall” area in Stadium Village near Coffman would have been much different according to earlier versions of the Central Corridor plan that called for tunneling the train for part of the stretch. But the project ran short of money because of the high cost of placing the infrastructure on the street throughout St. Paul.
Would that have meant keeping washington open to cars? If so, this is vastly better.
Even if not, I’m not sure the extra cost would have been worth it.