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Access Kent

fotoman311

By fotoman311
in Grand Rapids Coffee House

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fotoman311 Burg

fotoman311

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So, on the topic of Access Kent sucking, which was mentioned in the Eastown explosion thread, anyone know how long it takes them to update their property/parcel listings with new sales? 1 month, 2 months?

The house next to mine is a two unit. The former owner paid $120,000 for it in 2005. Before it was forclosed on last July or August, he had set an asking price of $140,000. What a freaking joke that was. When the bank finally got around to listing it, it was at 69,900. They later lowered it to 65,000, so they're losing quite a bit of money on the deal, depending on how much he paid for a down payment on the house. Now it's finally sold and I'm curious what the final price was.

Also, a completely unrelated question, but perhaps there is a traffic engineer or planner who can answer it for me.

Why on earth do some pedestrian walk signals not change from red to white everytime the light turns green? I really hate it when I get up to a signal, and the light's green, but the walk signal says don't walk and I have no way of judging if the light is going to change soon, because there's no flashing warning. It's really become a bad pet peeve of mine, because I can't think of any logical reason why they wouldn't just be set to change every time, even when the button is not pressed. Wouldn't doing that eliminate the need for buttons? Seems like there has to be a logical reason that I'm just missing.

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highwayguy Whistle-Stop

highwayguy

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Why on earth do some pedestrian walk signals not change from red to white everytime the light turns green? I really hate it when I get up to a signal, and the light's green, but the walk signal says don't walk and I have no way of judging if the light is going to change soon, because there's no flashing warning. It's really become a bad pet peeve of mine, because I can't think of any logical reason why they wouldn't just be set to change every time, even when the button is not pressed. Wouldn't doing that eliminate the need for buttons? Seems like there has to be a logical reason that I'm just missing.
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fotoman311 Burg

fotoman311

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There could be several different reasons, but in general, it has to do with signal timing.

In some situations, the green time needed for traffic on a cross street to clear may not be long enough to allow pedestrians to cross the intersection. For example, in order to cross 5 lanes of traffic, the flashing "don't walk" phase would be somewhere in the range of 15-20 seconds, plus at least a few seconds of "walk" phase. However, if there are only a few cars per cycle, the time required to clear traffic would be much less. By shortening the green for the cross street, the main street gets more time, reducing delay for motorists. Adding a pushbutton for pedestrians adds green time to the cross street only during the cycles when a pedestrian is present, which is why the pedestrian signal only goes to "walk" after the button is pushed.

Other intersections may use vehicle detection, such as an inductance loop or camera, to "trigger" a signal. At these locations, the green for the cross street is skipped entirely when no vehicles are waiting, and only stays green for as long as necessary. In this case, the pedestrian pushbutton is needed to tell the signal that a pedestrian is present and waiting to cross. Otherwise the pedestrian would need to wait for a car to arrive before crossing, and then would need to hurry across. Again, the goal is to reduce mainline delays.

In areas where pedestrian volumes are high and there is someone crossing during most cycles, it may be best to avoid using a pushbutton and simply allow time during every cycle for pedestrians to cross. This is common in downtown areas, where there are few pushbuttons. However, in locations where pedestrians cross infrequently, it doesn't make sense to delay traffic in order to add the extra time to every cycle.

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highwayguy Whistle-Stop

highwayguy

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Thanks. This makes some sense. Doesn't make it less annoying though. :) I should start making a list of the ones where I think it's the most dumb. Fountain and Division comes to mind. On new systems, are there timers so that they can be set to work automatically during times when pedestrians are likely to be present and wait for a push when they aren't? That would seem to make sense.

And I hate the induction loops because they don't usually detect my bike, even when I make an effort to get them to do it.

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