User expresses frustration with "half-signals" that cause confusion and safety issues for pedestrians and cyclists. They suggest replacing them with full traffic signals on busy roads or signed crossings on low-speed roads, and implementing bicycle detection instead of beg buttons for half-signals.
I HATE half signals for a few reasons: - They stop cyclists on the main street unless there's a bypass for the pedestrian crossing. There are also situations where it still feels like you have to stop at the red light, because the bypass was designed poorly. Parts of Shelbourne St in Victoria demonstrate this, which I covered in this video: https://youtu.be/gRp3bpbdqGU - It's VERY UNCLEAR if pedestrians have to obey the car light - they might according to the MVA, but intuitively, no signal means it's an uncontrolled crosswalk. I'm from Victoria, where people tend to cross on half-signal reds. I was curious how people handled these when I was in Vancouver recently, so I stepped off of the curb in front of a row of cars treating the walk signal as their own personal traffic light. None of them flinched, driving within a foot of me, ignoring the stop sign and proceeding through the intersection. All the other pedestrians on the sidewalk were stopped, demonstrating a sad obedience to the dominance of cars. This arterial was so busy there's no way anyone would wait for a gap in 4+ lanes of traffic to ride across. At this point, they are a full traffic signal and should be built that way. Half-signals on low speed two-lane roads should be replaced with signed crossings. The point of half-signals is to give bikes priority without turning a side street into a convenient route for cars. Half signals shouldn't have beg buttons at all, to prevent drivers from activating the signal for themselves, an act I consider selfish. Bicycle detection should be used instead. Those confirmation lights are great and seen everywhere that detection is used here.