Category: Photography & Images

Word from the BPAC meeting says that NYSDOT re-timed the signals on both ends of Burnett Blvd, because of the increased traffic from the closed bridges on Degarmo Rd. Here’s what that looks like from a bicyclist’s perspective; you may want to compare this with other measurements in the recent past.

T=0.00 – I’m approaching the light and obviously won’t get through on the current cycle. However, the car in the left lane is just clearing the sensor loop, so we know the sensor has been triggered:

T=4.133 – Signals turn yellow:

T=8.433 – The left signal turns red (the right signal will go on 4/60 s later), with the white car accelerating hard across the stop line:

As nearly as I can tell, the green-to-yellow change has decreased from about 7 s to maybe 4 s; that may be influenced by the car position / speed across the loop. NYSDOT definitely hasn’t increased the minimum delay to provide additional time for bicyclists.

The yellow-to-red transition may have decreased from 5 s to 4 s; it definitely hasn’t increased.

T=10.433 – The white car deliberately blew through the yellow and red signals:

T=12.000 – The white car has almost cleared the intersection, 3.567 s after blowing through the red light, and cross traffic in Rt 55 has started to move:

It’s impossible to tell from my position when the Rt 55 traffic saw their green signals, but they started moving 3.5 s from the time the signal in our direction turned red. I’d previously measured that at 1.333 s, so NYSDOT seems to have lengthen the all-red overlap.

T=14.433 – Cross traffic on Rt 55 fills the intersection:

That’s 10.3 s from the Burnett signal turning yellow, which usually happens when we’re just barely into the intersection; we need at least 15 s to reach the far side of all six lanes. Obviously, cross traffic on Rt 55 must notice that we haven’t cleared the intersection when their signals turn green and avoid running over us; that’s legally required, but it’s obvious NYSDOT (still) isn’t helping bicyclists get across the intersection.

The NYSDOT regional office behind my right shoulder has a bike rack. We’ve never seen any bikes in it, so it’s equally obvious NYSDOT doesn’t practice dogfooding. I’ve never been able to invite / persuade / shame anyone from NYSDOT to ride along with us, so they can show me why their design really does “mak[e] our highway systems safe and functional for all users“.

Just because I hadn’t done so for quite a while, I rode Grand Avenue from Beechwood north to the rail trail. The rotted asphalt at the Westbound Arterial (a.k.a. Maple St, at that point) intersection makes it easy to spot the quadrupole sensor loop:

After half a minute, with no traffic pulling up behind me, I eased the bike over the central wire:

Which is exactly as awkward as it seems:

Much to my surprise, the sensor tripped:

That’s about 50 s from the time I rolled over the first of the two sensor loops, which is fast enough for me. It’s unusual to find a sensor loop that detects a bike, though.

A bit over 6 s seconds later, I’ve cleared the intersection:

The rear camera shows that the light remains green:

And it stays green:

About 11 s after turning green, a car approaches the sensor loop:

I think that reset the signal timing, so that light remained green for nearly 23 s:

It turned red after 26 s:

As nearly as I can tell, the minimum green time for this intersection is 12 s.

So life is good: the sensor loop detects a bicycle and the signal remains green for long enough to a bike to clear the intersection. If only all intersections worked that way!

Compare that with the minimum 7 s for the Burnett Blvd intersection and you (well, I) wonder why crossing six lanes requires 5 s less than crossing three lanes. Perhaps different standards apply to this single-direction cross-traffic flow that make it much more difficult than Burnett’s bidirectional cross traffic?