Delayed green lights: a subtle safety measure aiding the vision of zero pedestrian deaths.

As one urban advocacy campaign sunsets, another rises.  I’ve written multiple times—mostly before 2015—about the complete streets initiative: an effort to encourage municipal public works departments to design urban streets for all different tiers of users.  In short, a “complete street” does not just feature vehicular lanes; it offers distinct bike lanes or grade-separated cycle tracks to promote safe bicycling, while, a buffered few feet from the curbs, generous sidewalks make it safe for pedestrians, including wheelchairs or strollers.  The street offers complete access for all different modes of transport.  Complete streets still serve as a viable metric and aspirational tool for road design: after all, despite considerable improvement in the last decade, most American streets aren’t fully accommodating for cars, bicycles, and pedestrians, particularly in suburbs where the density and demand for multi-modal use is still often high.  However, at least since around 2018 or 2019, the Vision Zero undertaking has become considerably more prevalent than complete streets.  Such a dichotomy can lead to the conclusion that Vision Zero has replaced complete streets—though not entirely true, it’s not an unreasonable deduction.  After all, Vision Zero promotes better pedestrian environments as an outcome, much like complete streets, but the approach is different: instead of simply building more lanes and trails for auxiliary transportation, Vision Zero seeks to maximize the safety environment for pedestrians by subjecting cars to greater restriction, including (as this article will feature) delayed green lights.  The “Zero” these advocates envision is a full year with no pedestrian fatalities or serious injuries related to cars.  No collisions.

The earliest reference to Vision Zero dates from a Swedish parliamentary initiative in 1997; the various traffic safety measures that subsequently emerged have ostensibly reduced road fatalities in the Nordic nation by over 60%.  Efforts to import Vision Zero to North America took hold in Chicago and New York City in the early 2010s, spreading like wildfire by 2015, when cities like Boston, Portland, San Diego, Seattle, and Washington DC followed their examples.  Stricter speed limits in high density areas, reduced opportunity to turn right on red, highly visible mid-block pedestrian crossings, and greater enforcement of infractions all factor into the Vision Zero initiative.  And, at last, I provide a visual example, across the river from Washington DC in the heavily urbanized county of Arlington, Virginia:

This little sign at an intersection’s light pole offers a fairly simple concept—the delayed green lights—which have been in practice across the region for at least as long as I’ve lived here.  This is the first time, however, that I’ve seen a display for “Vision Zero”, almost as a branding tool.  Has it entered everyday parlance?  I’m not sure, but maybe Arlingtonians can figure it out from context at this intersection.  Needless to say, this little sign offers a QR code and the direct URL for those who wish to know more.  And it doesn’t take take a brain surgeon to witness and comprehend how it plays out.

Within this blog, I’ve barely touched on the topic, even though I agree with most of Vision Zero’s tactics.  But there’s something about its aspirations that stick in my craw.  I recognize that the name delivers a branding punch that is missing from “complete streets”: the absolute nature of “zero” means that initiative using this word perks up the eyes and ears.  (We gravitate toward words that begin with Z because, at least in English, they are few and far between.  “Zero” has more rhetorical impact than “no” or “none”.)  But envisioning zero road deaths is (to use another punchy term that begins with an uncommon letter) quixotic.  Eliminating road fatalities is essentially aspiring to perfection.  Is perfection ever a good benchmark?  Are there any jurisdictions that have fulfilled their zero vision?  Ostensibly Jersey City, New Jersey (population 290,000) achieved zero road deaths in 2022, after several years of iterative changes to lane delineators, pedestrian crossing bump outs, bike lanes, etc (and, I suspect, delayed green lights) all within the banner of Vision Zero, which it adopted in 2019.  The city’s leadership and traffic engineers met their vision.  A few miles away, the city of Hoboken apparently achieved seven consecutive years without a traffic fatality.  This is impressive, but it is one of the most densely populated, intrinsically walkable cities in the country; it is a fraction of the size of Jersey City, in terms of both population and land area.  (If one drills down small enough, I’m sure Toad Suck, Arkansas has also gone many consecutive years without traffic deaths.)  At a certain point, these larger cities are going to suffer a traffic mishap; at that point does the city fail its Vision Zero goals and seek to reform them until a return to perfection?  And, if that’s the response, doesn’t such reform nullify all previous efforts?  Even Sweden hasn’t really met its zero-death utopia: the rate was on the decline with the parliamentary initiative past in the 1990s, and, the lower car usage during 2020-22 COVID restrictions notwithstanding, the vehicle fatality trends have generally flatlined.  

The goal may be pollyannaish, but the objectives along the way are laudable.  How does it work at that one intersection in Arlington?

The area in question is Ballston, a densely commercial neighborhood that continues the long stretch of high-rises at various WMATA Metro (subway) stops with names Virginia Square, Courthouse, Rosslyn.  This portion of Arlington County gives the region a true skyline it otherwise would lack, due to height limitations in Washington DC proper.  But it took years for Ballston (and Arlington County as a whole) to get this way: county leadership has encouraged dense commercial and residential development around the subway stops, as part of transit-oriented development, which encourages walkability and transit use by relaxing building height restrictions where mass transit is nearby.  Ballston used to host a popular mall in the massive structure featured in the above photo, where the Macy’s labelscar is still visible.  The old Ballston Common Mall is incrementally morphing into Ballston Quarter, an office building that still features some mall-type retail to support it, all at the intersection of arterial North Glebe Road and collector North Carlin Springs Road.

Forgiving the smudges on my photos, the point still stands: Carlin Springs (visible on the righthand margin) terminates at North Glebe, stretching across most of the photo with the Ballston Quarter complex on the far left.  The road looks like this—

—with multifamily residential fro a block before devolving to a slightly lower intensity of uses that befit a collector road.  Conversely, North Glebe Road is intensely busy:

Lots of other offices, townhomes, condos, and restaurants/retail occupy the streetscapes nearby.   North Glebe offers multiple turn lanes, a median to separate directions of traffic flow, and, less than a mile to the north of this intersection, it provides direct access to I-66.  It’s an arterial by every metric.  Despite the width of the North Glebe, the area is generally ped friendly, with clearly painted crosswalks, generous time durations for accommodating pedestrians, and numerous first-floor storefronts intended to both attract and generate foot traffic.

In short, this section of Ballston is a perfect area to implement Vision Zero fundamentals.

Typically, in intersections like this, the light for one of the two roads turns green, and, simultaneously, the corresponding pedestrian crossing flashes “WALK” (or, in modern days, the walking stick figure).  It makes perfect sense for pedestrians and cars traveling a parallel path to move forward at the same time.  The problem we’ve all experienced, though, is that green light gives cars the permission to make an easy right turn, and, not wanting to slow the vehicles behind them, they often gun through that 90° angle before the pedestrians have had a chance to venture forward.  Impatient motorists don’t want to wait until there’s a break in the pedestrians crossing at the crosswalk; frankly, at some busy downtown intersections, the break in foot traffic never happens.  The cars wishing to turn right have to slink on through at the very end, after the light has turned yellow or even red.

So what does Vision Zero encourage here as an alternative?  A delayed green light, of course.  This video demonstrates how it works: view the pedestrian signal and the stop light, then notice the lag.

It’s not long at all—maybe only two seconds.  But it gives pedestrians time to assert themselves and get out in the crosswalk before cars are allowed to do so; after all, the signage next to the stop lights says “NO TURN ONE RED” for cars.  So if a vehicle darts out first, the driver is breaking the law.

I started noticing delayed green lights throughout the region about four or five years ago, and frankly, many of them are more conservative than this one, giving pedestrians even a longer head start—sometimes almost five seconds.  Regardless of the duration, the delayed green lights represent a concession to pedestrianism that the complete streets effort probably would overlook.  But I also recognize that, whether under the banner of Vision Zero or not, some of the more recent pedestrian crossing innovations yield mixed results.  I’m still not sure about this one, which, in the last ten years, has become ubiquitous:

The user-activated crossings give pedestrians more control, and, since many of them are audible (with beeps or chirps) they are particularly helpful for blind or visually impaired pedestrians, empowering them to exercise complete control over when they cross, alerting them when it’s safe.  But, in many circumstances, they force the pedestrian to make one extra effort to get that friendly white stick figure.  In the years before the activation buttons, the “WALK” signals came automatically.

Are the user-activated crossings a concession to cars?  That is, if no pedestrian is there to activate the signal, will cars not have to sit through that delayed green light?  Do pedestrians forfeit their right to cross through a stop light’s cycle if they don’t hit the button?  In some situations, that has been my experience.  I’m not sure how this contributes to the vision of zero pedestrian deaths, since it seems to put more burden on pedestrians to assert their right to cross the street.  But it’s a work in progress!  And, since an urban area with zero traffic deaths must have the road to Shangri-la as its main street, I’m sure, in the future, one should expect other little buttons and levers and colored bars in the ground helping us cross.  Maybe even wave a flag so we become our own crossing guard.  The endpoint is a big triumphant zero, viewed through rose tinted glasses.