That pedestrian button you push to cross the street: do you know how it works?

If you think by pushing that button you arrive at your destination quicker, you're wrong. Most people have no clue this is the case. The other day I visited the Walkable West Palm Beach blog and found this article by Jesse Bailey.

This blog is really something you have to read at least once a week if you can. The blog, certainly, is for the more wonkish among us, however if you read the articles many of the ideas are applicable to your daily life and also apply to many cities in Florida, including the City of Lake Worth.

Here is part of the article I referenced about "that button"—material from Jeff Speck's Walkability Study presented to the City of West Palm Beach:

     A survey of the most and least walkable cities in America reveals a clear correlation: walkable cities rarely have pushbutton signal request buttons [emphasis added]. Called “beg buttons” by pedestrian advocates, these signals are alternately annoying and confusing to pedestrians, most of whom do not understand how they are supposed to work—and many of whom end up jaywalking out of sheer frustration.
     Here is how these signals work in downtown West Palm Beach: A pedestrian approaches a crosswalk, pushes the button, and waits for the light to change. Typically, a long time passes before the light changes—sometimes more than two minutes. After perhaps 30 seconds, the pedestrian assumes that the light is broken, and jaywalks.
     What the pedestrian does not realize is that the pushbutton is not designed to cause the light to change. Rather, it is designed only to lengthen the eventual red light, so that the pedestrian has more time to cross. Given the tremendous amount of jaywalking that these signals cause, these lengthened crossing times are, at best, irrelevant. This dangerous behavior is perhaps the clearest example of the vast difference between traffic safety theory and traffic-safety reality in Palm Beach County, and should be of grave concern to County engineers.

And that's why you see so much jaywalking in places like the little City of Lake Worth. Pedestrians either think the button is broken or cannot justify having to wait so long.