I Like Traffic Lights

Only four years after I originally suggested to the City of Charlottetown that they install them, and two months after they were first installed, we now have working pedestrian signals at the corner of Prince and Grafton Streets in downtown [[Charlottetown]] (see my February note about their original installation).

Although there are 7.6 million different ways for me to walk to work (or was that 32 different ways — I can never remember), almost all of them take me through this intersection, and so I imagine I’ve waited at the horrible old vehicles-only signal lights as a pedestrian about 2,000 times.

And they were horrible. And dangerous. From two of the four corners you could hardly see the lights, and because the yellow light came on about 5 seconds before traffic started moving in the other direction, there was the ever-present risk of interfering with traffic.

The new pedestrian signals are wonderful — super-modern with a 20-second countdown timer and everything. They’ll be a big boon to pedestrian safety and will provide a great ease to my nervous morning constitution.