Beg Buttons Are Bad Infrastructure Made Worse

Beg buttons, those buttons you press as a non-car entity trying to cross a road at a crosswalk or other intersection (like a trail-road intersection without a formal crosswalk), are a good-sounding idea ("responsive to demand!") that is problematic when it works and actively made worse by how it is practically implemented. Today, I want to talk about both of those elements: why beg buttons can be a problem anyway, but particularly why they're awful as typically implemented.

1. Beg buttons center cars too much

Why are beg buttons problematic? Because they contribute to the overwhelming sense that our cities and streets are truly for car traffic and everyone else is secondary at best. Think about the implications of the name: cars are the default road owners (not just users) and so everyone else must "beg" to have the right to go.

Even when highly responsive (as say on the Duck Creek Trail, where the button to cross Eastern Avenue in Davenport is almost instant) they still define all others who aren't cars as secondary: a bike can't continue on the trail without stopping and dismounting to press a button, and a jogger has to stop and jog in place. Even a pedestrian walking slowly has to pause. Cars, on the other hand, are assumed to flow through unless the button has been pressed.

Imagine if we reversed this: cars have to pull up to press a button to turn a light green, but they can do so instantly. Do you think drivers would accept that? And yet, as we know, the throughput of a bike lane is not necessarily less than a car lane (somewhat fewer people total, but much more per space allotted because we don't actually give bikes the same space as cars). So why should we always prioritize the car lanes? Because we have urban spaces designed around cars--as the beg button itself indicates.

2. Implementation makes this worse

So even though beg buttons symbolize problematic things about car-centric designs of cities when perfectly implemented, they aren't usually perfectly implemented either. First of all, they often function not to allow bike/pedestrian traffic to demand a light, but simply to permit a pedestrian green light whenever the cars in the same direction get one.

And that means if they're not pressed at exactly the right time, you're waiting a whole light cycle to get a green -- even if the cars next to you get one.

This actively disadvantages non-car movement. Cars automatically get a green; others only get one IF cars do AND they pressed a button to beg.

Non-driving transportation is hard enough. Making it harder by not automatically giving a green (but privileging car greens) makes it worse.

3. Lying lights

But then, somehow, it gets worse. Because not all beg buttons work at all. 

That picture above? It neglects to mention that if there isn't a car next to you, you won't GET a green (crossing Kimberly at Northwest Boulevard in Davenport) even if you pressed the button. So the beg button is, in fact, doing nothing. I stood an entire two light cycles there, because only the left turn green came on (which would have crossed my walking path) for the first cycle--because there was no car outside the left lane.

In other words, the beg button is a lie. It actively impedes, rather than facilitating, pedestrian movement by telling walkers to wait for something that it doesn't trigger. 

Did I mention it was less than 10 degrees out?

Beg buttons are a sign of overly car-centered design at the best; but at the worst, they're implemented in such a way as to make non-car road users actively unsafe (either crossing the road against a light or standing frozen on the side) and/or illegal (violating signage that lies about what's coming). 

That seems like a pretty bad bargain to me.