City group questions whether College Ave. lights working properly

A Columbia group wants answers about whether the new pedestrian lights on College Avenue are working as they should.

It cost the city, state and University of Missouri more than $800,000 to build the safety features along the street, between Rollins Street and University Ave. Included in that are two sets of HAWK signals, which stop car traffic when a pedestrian presses a button on the side of the road.

Columbia’s Bicycle and Pedestrian commission asked MoDOT for more information on the timing of the lights, and the sometimes long delay between pressing the button and the signal starting.

The HAWK lights warn drivers with a flashing yellow light that turns to solid red. Cars must stop at the red light, and allow pedestrians to cross. The solid becomes a flashing red, which lets drivers go through as long as no pedestrians are in the crosswalk.

Lawrence Simonson, secretary of the group and assistant director of the pedestrian advocacy group PedNet Coalition, said the delays between pressing the button and the lights could lead to a more rampant misuse and mistrust of the system.

“You push that button, and nothing happens,” Simonson told ABC 17 News. “You stand there for a minute and you all of a sudden think, well, this thing is broken, it must not be working.

“So now you’ve gone on your way, and a motor vehicle is coming, and [the light is] red. So the motor vehicle stops, and they look around and see that no pedestrian is there. Pretty soon, they’re just frustrated with the system, and eventually, their compliance rating is going to go down as well.”

Simonson said he supports HAWK lights are proven systems in improving pedestrian safety, and feels the timing issue could deter people from approving a new one.

ABC 17 News saw several people Friday night press the button to activate the lights, but walk through the intersection before they came on. One person pressed the button and cleared the intersection before a light came on – 66 seconds after he had pressed it, and 25 seconds after he had made it to the other side.

MoDOT traffic engineer Trent Brooks tells ABC 17 News this isn’t a flaw, but a function of the HAWK lights. The timing is in sync with the “cycles” of all stoplights on College Ave., from Hospital Drive to Paris Road, which he estimated to take anywhere from 60 to 90 seconds. The road handles 25,000 cars a day, and Brooks said they wanted to avoid “platoons” of cars from having to make frequent stops and starts. When the traffic becomes more “random,” such as cars turning onto and off of side streets, to trigger the HAWK lights.

“And what we really didn’t want to do is have this platoon of traffic coming towards these pedestrian crossings, and then right whenever that platoon gets there, all of a sudden, have it go red,” Brooks said.

While Brooks said pedestrians shouldn’t use HAWK lights with the expectation they’ll immediately walk, Simonson believes the current timing favors vehicle traffic over pedestrian traffic. The HAWK lights are the first of their kind in mid-Missouri, but he believes syncing them with other traffic signals isn’t within “best practices” of using the lights.

“The next time we come back with something that has been proven to work nationally, is a great thing to implement here in Columbia, we’re real worried that the public’s going to come back and say, ‘Listen, you told us that on the HAWK signal, and we all dislike it,'” Simonson said.

Brooks said MoDOT would continue to monitor the system there, but did not have any plans to change how it works.