The Seattle PI looks into why Seattle doesn’t have many all-way-walk signals. We currently have an all-way-walk at 1st and Pike downtown and at the Alaska Junction in West Seattle. You may be more familiar with these if you’ve visited Denver or parts of San Francisco. An all-way-walk signal allows pedestrians to cross streets in all directions with no vehicle traffic. However, the drawback is that pedestrians have to wait through two light cycles, one for each direction of vehicle traffic. SDOT says this longer total light cycle would slow down vehicles and pedestrians:
“In 2007, SDOT conducted a comprehensive ‘All-Way-Walk’ (AWW) analysis at more than 70 signals in the downtown retail core area. The study results showed that the vast majority of intersections would actually experience a significant increase in delay for motorists and pedestrians at AWW intersections and also, in turn, other intersections along the corridors. The delay to buses would also be significantly greater,” he says.
I really liked the all-way-walk signals in San Francisco, but can see the definite drawback of having to wait longer to cross. It seems something like this would work best where pedestrian traffic is high and vehicle traffic is low enough to have a quicker signal cycle. Is there anywhere else in Seattle where an all-way-walk would make sense? Maybe somewhere on Capitol Hill? Or what about Pioneer Square?
