City of Sacramento / walkability

Sac City NEW beg buttons

Dan Allison8 Comments

I was out walking last evening, and was horrified to discover this:

photo of new beg button at Alhambra Blvd and L Street
new beg button at Alhambra Blvd & L St

This is a brand new beg button (technically called pedestrian pushbutton) on Alhambra Blvd in Sacramento. These have not been turned on yet, hence the cardboard over the button itself, but they are newly installed. There are a number of these along Alhambra Blvd, though I don’t yet know how many. For at least the ones I observed, these are all at locations where the pedestrian signal was previously on auto-recall, meaning the pedestrian signal changes as part of the regular signal cycle, not requiring any action on the part of the walker. Now, with these beg buttons, a person walking must ‘beg’ to cross the street by pressing the button. These buttons do not, at least in Sacramento, speed up the signal cycle. The person waiting must wait the same amount of time before a walk indicator comes on.

This is an affront to myself and anyone who walks. I’m sure the city considers this a pedestrian safety improvement, and I’d not be surprised if the city used pedestrian safety funds to install it. But it is a motor vehicle facility and improvement, it does absolutely nothing for someone walking. What is does do is allow the traffic engineer to favor motor vehicle traffic in signal timing.

The trend all over the US is to either remove such beg buttons completely, or to change them to accessible audible buttons. In a few places, they are being replaced by automated pedestrian detection, so that no action is required on the part of any walker. San Francisco has converted all of its beg buttons to accessible buttons. Other bay area cities have started to do so. I know of no place in the US where new beg buttons are being installed.

City of Sacramento Public Works is populated by fossil engineers and fossilized thinking. It has a cars-first attitude, and will continue to have that attitude until the fossils are cleared out. Put them in a museum of the 1970s, and get them out of our transportation system.

8 thoughts on “Sac City NEW beg buttons”

  2. Thank you for pointing out documents to me. I can’t keep up. I was unaware of the Vision Zero update. There is no mention of Alhambra Blvd intersections (other than at X Street) in the document. Alhambra Blvd is not a high injury corridor. Pedestrian pushbuttons are not a federally recognized safety countermeasure, though automated pedestrian detection is.

    The update document points to two other documents: ‘Pedestrian-Crossing-Guidelines-April-2021’ and ‘Treatment-Applications-Guide-to-Pedestrian-Crossing-Guidelines-April-2021’. The second has some relevant information, and I’ll post on that soon.

    I have not heard that the traffic signal operations are being updated.

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  4. What if….

    Since this intersection has already been re-timed to accomodate for pedestrian actuation, the City:

    a) Installs a camera (intersection needs one) with passive ped detection
    b) Covers beg buttons with a sign noting only for backup
    c) Adds detection confirmation feedback light/sign

    Wins:
    Engineers – new camera, keeps ADA auditory compliance, fewer grumbling masses
    Planners – ped count data, innovative replicable project, resident awareness
    Residents – don’t have to drop Safeway groceries to cross

    Add ‘pilot’ or ‘multimodal’ on to the title and it could probably even be entirely grant funded. The pedestrian is still clearly not the priority movement but at least it’s not new beg buttons ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

    Example feedback sign from Portland for bikes, Oakland and other cities in CA are experimenting with various versions. https://bikeportland.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/10/Screen-Shot-2019-10-11-at-12.36.14-PM-560×790.jpg

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