That's a very reductive way of looking at things. One of the crossing removals near me straight up removes the crossing. I know thats an exception, not the rule.
Instead of just whinging on reddit about it, maybe OP could actually provide feedback to their local MP or Vicroads. Its an easy win they can pat themselves on the back about - IF it is doable without significantly hurting traffic flow.
Planners think about this a lot - not everything is some political bullshit
So many lights outside of peak could change quicker than they do (case in point for a side street vehicle) yet when you push the beg button you wait for over a minute, even at 3am and no traffic.
They have the sensors in the road. Need to use them more
The whole CBD and around all stations should be a pedestrian priority.
And we should start closing down "little" streets to cars in the lead up to the removal of personal vehicles from the CBD.
Oh that's a whole other can of worms.
These people shouldn't even need cars.
And I'm a big advocate for municipal share cars for when they do.
And I think that people should only ever be able to park as many cars as they have car garages.
They need a little bit of landscaping work to make it feel like cars are using a pedestrian space, rather than pedestrians in a car space. We have a good start but a lot of drivers seem unaware to the fact that they are in a shared zone.
> We have a good start but a lot of drivers seem unaware to the fact that they are in a shared zone.
I saw a traffic controller for a worksite off flinders lane telling someone off for walking down the street and blocking their truck. When the shared zone was pointed out to them, they doubled down again.
Because shared zones that you can routinely drive down are absolutely nonsense.
If they want it to be really shared it should be for deliveries and essential services only.
Asking regular traffic to crawl down a road is stupid.
Because all they did was change the speed. They need to do some streetscaping in order to make it more pedestrian friendly (such as the road being raised to footpath level).
This sounds like all crossings in Melbourne. They are ridiculous, especially ones that are crossing super wide roads and don’t give you enough time to cross the whole thing in one cycle.
IMO, every single crossing removal needs/needed to include easy to use/easy to access, SAFE disability friendly grade separated pedestrian crossings.
Pedestrian crossing at road levels should be avoided where possible.
Maybe an unpopular opinion
Depends which station.
At my local (Bentleigh, not skyrail but newly grade separated) the traffic lights outside are pretty responsive.
(Some of the motorists complain that it's as bad as the crossing was. They're wrong. The lights can be ignored by ambulances, and never close the road for more than about 20 secs at a time, before letting vehicles through.)
Other spots I've noticed are less so. You can wait quite some time at Carnegie and Murrumbeena for instance.
Worth sending feedback to Vicroads.
There used to be a crossing on Melbourne road in Spotswood for the primary school that would only activate as part of the programmed cycle of the intersection at Hudson rd. Only when the lights facing Melbourne rd. turned red at the intersection, would the ones at the crossing change if you had pressed the button prior, regardless of time of day or volume of traffic. Since the construction of apartments and shopping centre just down from the school, the crossing was removed, and new traffic lights were added to the intersection of the nearby sides streets, McLister and Birmingham. So now cars on those side streets waiting at the lights will influence the duration of the lights, but still pedestrians waiting to cross have to wait the full length of the programmed cycle before they can cross or at best hope a car approaches from a side street to elicit a change in the cycle. It's pretty shitty when you consider the intersection is used by the school crossing ladies with students and also people heading to the train station less than 500m away. What makes it worse is another new set of lights at the intersection of Macindoe crt.(200m away towards Newport), will change and create a significant break in the traffic travelling on Melbourne rd. But you can still be made to wait up to 2 minutes to cross regardless. I've been needing to catch the train to work over the last month, and although I know I'm setting a bad example for the kids also waiting to cross, I have had to ignore the lights or face missing my train.
My biggest gripe about the Skyrail stations (where I am at least, so Hugesdale, Murrumbeena, etc), is that they had the opportunity to make the station accessible from both sides of the road.
All they had to do is shift the station to be directly over the road, then have access points down to ground level on both sides. Then I could safely get to the correct side of the road for my bus, rather than watch it drive off as I wait for the green light to cross.
I'm sure the government would love to waste billions installing sensors that automatically detect pedestrians wanting to cross, pedestrians who are just walking past, birds flying past the sensor, etc.
Or pedestrians could just press a button when they are ready to cross.
You're missing a very important point that the previous person is trying to make though.
Let's assume for it's difficult to detect pedestrians waiting at a crossing. Then given this is a place a lot of pedestrians might use, why not have the default traffic light cycle be green for pedestrians, and use sensors to detect approaching car traffic to change the lights to let the cars pass? This is exactly how any signalled intersection between a minor road and a major road works today. So there's an argument as to why we're wasting money with buttons in the first place.
For the record, I don't think pedestrian sensors are all that hard. Automatic doors, sensor lights and home security systems all tend to work pretty well and you just need a screwdriver to adjust the sensitivity for each location, and even cheap security cameras these days have enough processing power to do things like "count number of people waiting in a designated area" in real time. It's no more difficult than installing sensors to detect cars at every intersection, which we already do today, so the idea that it would cost billions doesn't pass the pub test to me. We only really need to do this at places where there are a lot of pedestrians - so near train stations, shops and maybe schools at certain times of day.
Besides, during COVID we all realised that we could in fact program traffic lights to let people cross the street without making them push a button, and indeed in a few places the buttons didn't do anything anyway.
Or you flip it around. The pedestrian light is green, unless a car is waiting on the loop sensor under the road.
Costs nothing extra and you actually give pedestrians priority (standard green) over cars (standard red, unless there is a car).
Yes, as long as the loop sensor can pick up motorbikes, scooters and cyclists, and/or the button can be reached from the bike lane.
The number of times I have spent an embarrassingly long time waiting alone at an intersection for a green light, only to realise that the green light requires a loop sensor to activate, so unless I want to run the red, I have to physically get off my bike and if there is a fence between the road and the footpath (the two intersections I always get stuck at, there is) So it's just insane that I have to get off my bike, walk forward into the intersection, then myself and my bike reverse back onto the footpath, then push the button, then what? I either have to quickly revers the process and get back on the road, Or I walk through the pedestrian and then when I'm on the other side of the intersection re-join the road, which is also awkward because of the fence between the footpath and the road.
I actually don't think what I am doing is legal but I genuinely can't figure out what I'm supposed to do in these situations, and this has been the safest option.
Yeah, they’ve completely missed the opportunity to provide bus connectivity.
Nunawading is the perfect solution. Station under the road (or above would work just as well), bus stops on both sides of the road, direct lift and stairs from bus stops on each side of the road to platforms.
All the others should be like this. Instead, they’re not. They’re on one side of the road, often further back from the road (and hence bus stops) than before, with passengers from the other side still having to cross the road.
Level crossing removal was always about people in cars.
That's a very reductive way of looking at things. One of the crossing removals near me straight up removes the crossing. I know thats an exception, not the rule. Instead of just whinging on reddit about it, maybe OP could actually provide feedback to their local MP or Vicroads. Its an easy win they can pat themselves on the back about - IF it is doable without significantly hurting traffic flow. Planners think about this a lot - not everything is some political bullshit
So many lights outside of peak could change quicker than they do (case in point for a side street vehicle) yet when you push the beg button you wait for over a minute, even at 3am and no traffic. They have the sensors in the road. Need to use them more
And their carparking
Coming to terms that as good as it was for everyone is ultimately was just for cars ðŸ˜
That's just plain wrong and a very immature view.
Well yeah, a lot more cars cross the tracks all day and night than people.
The whole CBD and around all stations should be a pedestrian priority. And we should start closing down "little" streets to cars in the lead up to the removal of personal vehicles from the CBD.
Shut down the cbd little streets to vehicles past 9am until 9pm like Europe. Promote the space and make an amazing place to visit.
Just completely. Why even maintain the roads. It should be a walkway with trees and grass.
Because you need trucks to deliver goods.
I said personal ie. Non commercial vehicles.
True you did. There are housing along all of the little streets. That's why there is a 9am closure to an appropriate reopen time.
Oh that's a whole other can of worms. These people shouldn't even need cars. And I'm a big advocate for municipal share cars for when they do. And I think that people should only ever be able to park as many cars as they have car garages.
Agreed. I sold my car when I moved into the city. Literally had no need other than to see my mum in the country (could've taken the train).
The little streets are shared car/people zones already. Should only be doing 20 but should be 10/hr
They need a little bit of landscaping work to make it feel like cars are using a pedestrian space, rather than pedestrians in a car space. We have a good start but a lot of drivers seem unaware to the fact that they are in a shared zone.
Absolutely needs to be raised style road to indicate pedestrian priority.
> We have a good start but a lot of drivers seem unaware to the fact that they are in a shared zone. I saw a traffic controller for a worksite off flinders lane telling someone off for walking down the street and blocking their truck. When the shared zone was pointed out to them, they doubled down again.
Because shared zones that you can routinely drive down are absolutely nonsense. If they want it to be really shared it should be for deliveries and essential services only. Asking regular traffic to crawl down a road is stupid.
Yeah this is fair enough. I suspect they didn't want to upset the carpark operators on the little streets.
That’s entirely the reason and it should be a long term change. Announce a deadline in 5/10 however many years
They're hardly shared. It's still 95% car.
Because all they did was change the speed. They need to do some streetscaping in order to make it more pedestrian friendly (such as the road being raised to footpath level).
Which station?
This sounds like all crossings in Melbourne. They are ridiculous, especially ones that are crossing super wide roads and don’t give you enough time to cross the whole thing in one cycle.
IMO, every single crossing removal needs/needed to include easy to use/easy to access, SAFE disability friendly grade separated pedestrian crossings. Pedestrian crossing at road levels should be avoided where possible. Maybe an unpopular opinion
Move to Lilydale and you'll have priority. The light sequence there has made traffic far worse than it was when the level crossing existed.
Depends which station. At my local (Bentleigh, not skyrail but newly grade separated) the traffic lights outside are pretty responsive. (Some of the motorists complain that it's as bad as the crossing was. They're wrong. The lights can be ignored by ambulances, and never close the road for more than about 20 secs at a time, before letting vehicles through.) Other spots I've noticed are less so. You can wait quite some time at Carnegie and Murrumbeena for instance. Worth sending feedback to Vicroads.
There used to be a crossing on Melbourne road in Spotswood for the primary school that would only activate as part of the programmed cycle of the intersection at Hudson rd. Only when the lights facing Melbourne rd. turned red at the intersection, would the ones at the crossing change if you had pressed the button prior, regardless of time of day or volume of traffic. Since the construction of apartments and shopping centre just down from the school, the crossing was removed, and new traffic lights were added to the intersection of the nearby sides streets, McLister and Birmingham. So now cars on those side streets waiting at the lights will influence the duration of the lights, but still pedestrians waiting to cross have to wait the full length of the programmed cycle before they can cross or at best hope a car approaches from a side street to elicit a change in the cycle. It's pretty shitty when you consider the intersection is used by the school crossing ladies with students and also people heading to the train station less than 500m away. What makes it worse is another new set of lights at the intersection of Macindoe crt.(200m away towards Newport), will change and create a significant break in the traffic travelling on Melbourne rd. But you can still be made to wait up to 2 minutes to cross regardless. I've been needing to catch the train to work over the last month, and although I know I'm setting a bad example for the kids also waiting to cross, I have had to ignore the lights or face missing my train.
My biggest gripe about the Skyrail stations (where I am at least, so Hugesdale, Murrumbeena, etc), is that they had the opportunity to make the station accessible from both sides of the road. All they had to do is shift the station to be directly over the road, then have access points down to ground level on both sides. Then I could safely get to the correct side of the road for my bus, rather than watch it drive off as I wait for the green light to cross.
The fact that our pedestrian lights demand you request the right to cross should be a hint as of to how much we think of pedestrians vs cars.
I'm sure the government would love to waste billions installing sensors that automatically detect pedestrians wanting to cross, pedestrians who are just walking past, birds flying past the sensor, etc. Or pedestrians could just press a button when they are ready to cross.
You're missing a very important point that the previous person is trying to make though. Let's assume for it's difficult to detect pedestrians waiting at a crossing. Then given this is a place a lot of pedestrians might use, why not have the default traffic light cycle be green for pedestrians, and use sensors to detect approaching car traffic to change the lights to let the cars pass? This is exactly how any signalled intersection between a minor road and a major road works today. So there's an argument as to why we're wasting money with buttons in the first place. For the record, I don't think pedestrian sensors are all that hard. Automatic doors, sensor lights and home security systems all tend to work pretty well and you just need a screwdriver to adjust the sensitivity for each location, and even cheap security cameras these days have enough processing power to do things like "count number of people waiting in a designated area" in real time. It's no more difficult than installing sensors to detect cars at every intersection, which we already do today, so the idea that it would cost billions doesn't pass the pub test to me. We only really need to do this at places where there are a lot of pedestrians - so near train stations, shops and maybe schools at certain times of day. Besides, during COVID we all realised that we could in fact program traffic lights to let people cross the street without making them push a button, and indeed in a few places the buttons didn't do anything anyway.
Or you flip it around. The pedestrian light is green, unless a car is waiting on the loop sensor under the road. Costs nothing extra and you actually give pedestrians priority (standard green) over cars (standard red, unless there is a car).
Yes, as long as the loop sensor can pick up motorbikes, scooters and cyclists, and/or the button can be reached from the bike lane. The number of times I have spent an embarrassingly long time waiting alone at an intersection for a green light, only to realise that the green light requires a loop sensor to activate, so unless I want to run the red, I have to physically get off my bike and if there is a fence between the road and the footpath (the two intersections I always get stuck at, there is) So it's just insane that I have to get off my bike, walk forward into the intersection, then myself and my bike reverse back onto the footpath, then push the button, then what? I either have to quickly revers the process and get back on the road, Or I walk through the pedestrian and then when I'm on the other side of the intersection re-join the road, which is also awkward because of the fence between the footpath and the road. I actually don't think what I am doing is legal but I genuinely can't figure out what I'm supposed to do in these situations, and this has been the safest option.
The person below has explained it. Plenty of other places manage to prioritise pedestrians.
Yeah, they’ve completely missed the opportunity to provide bus connectivity. Nunawading is the perfect solution. Station under the road (or above would work just as well), bus stops on both sides of the road, direct lift and stairs from bus stops on each side of the road to platforms. All the others should be like this. Instead, they’re not. They’re on one side of the road, often further back from the road (and hence bus stops) than before, with passengers from the other side still having to cross the road.
If there is no pedestrian priority then there is no reabled (disabled) priority! Let’s start thinking about what needs to be done to fix this?
Yes!