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Lights can only be timed effectively on one way streets.

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Thats definitely a whole state of PA thing

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Traffic lights feel like they're timed for maximum inefficiency. You'll be waiting at the red and there will be no cross traffic. Then as soon as cross traffic approaches, their light turns red. And god help you if you are a pedestrian lol. You just chill out on the corner like a hooker.

I’m guessing it’s mostly that way to slow people down from speeding

NYC works because it’s on a flat, regular grid. Pittsburgh has so many roads at weird angles and changing elevations it gets messy fast.

The lights on Route 22 are synchronized from Monroeville through Murrysville. It's not timing but I guess it's a similar end-result.

https://archive.triblive.com/local/westmoreland/coordinated-traffic-lights-to-begin-operating-on-route-22-2/

Yes, it’s really bad! I moved here from New Jersey and I would commute from Shadyside to Bethel Park, and the traffic light situation drove me insane. I could not fathom that they were as long as they were compared to the length of red lights in New Jersey and you’re right the timing was always off. I now work remotely and don’t miss it at all!!

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It’s a lot easier to coordinate lights either by timing or based on demand when you have a major artery with the cross streets being much lower volume. You can set the main road for a very long green, or only turn the cross streets green when it detects a vehicle. That wouldn’t do much in E Lib with major cross streets like Negley, Euclid, Highland, and Center. Plus pedestrians.

Penn is already way too dangerous and does not need to be sped up

Swear the one on Maytide is super short sometimes. Like it’ll turn green and as you’re going through the intersection it turns yellow alas you are crossing.

Timing the lights doesn’t encourage speeding. Quite the opposite, in fact. If you drive faster than the speed limit, you’ll get ahead of the light timing and end up having to wait at a red light that you would have otherwise missed. Poorly timed lights frustrate drivers and incentivize speeding to make the light, as well as speeding through “pink” lights or just plain running lights.

Except for the lights at 22/48... when they changed those, it totally forked the intersection. When they change has no pattern, and sometimes they are green for 10 seconds, then back to red while cars are still waiting for a turn. It is insanity, so I avoid it if I can.

I drive penn ave and liberty ave both directions pretty frequently. Doing the speed limit on both, I very rarely hit constant red lights on liberty, but penn gets worse the closer you get to the intersection by target.

In the latter case, the rapid changes in development is certainly part of it. A lot of lights have been added, and the changing to bidirectional penn circle (which I whole heartedly support) has added twice the number of cycles to those intersections.

Do you notice it in both directions? Time of day? How fast are you traveling? There are certainly some light timings that stink in the city, I’m just having a hard time seeing this here.

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Banksville road makes me see red. If you’re at the front of the line by eat n park and you absolutely floor it, you might get through before it turns yellow, but 9/10 times, you’ll be watching that light turn red before anyone gets to it

I get that, but when they're that badly timed, you HUGELY increase the likelihood of people blocking intersections and missing lights because of short distances between.

Thinking specifically of the light at Penn and Centre and the lights around Target. Just so, so badly timed.

If by that you mean highway speeds and few traffic lights, no. It has narrow lanes, frequent intersections, pedestrians crossing, parked cars, and all the other things that come with an urban area, so it should be treated as such.

Be ause the people in charge of it have no idea what they're doing and no one does anything about it.

I would like to believe that this is the reason why:

https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2022/11/29/main-streets-designed-like-state-highways-how-they-work-and-how-to-change-them

I thought this was pretty obvious. If one direction is timed well the cars going the opposite way are going to have a bad time.

They can still time normal roads with lights.

My gripe is the intersections where the timing causes a predictable back up - light on highland at the entrance to east side turns red just as the one at center turns green. Cars all squeeze up. Commence blocked intersection. Repeat. Why can’t that be fixed?!?

Nah they changed it so that the walk signal turns just a few beats before the light turns green, so pedestrians are lined up right in the crosswalk to get pancaked by those eager to turn

If you really want to get mad at our bad traffic infrastructure, look up some info on Dutch traffic signals. Our signals are hopelessly outdated and horribly inefficient. Anyone claiming otherwise hasn't seen how well traffic flows in Amsterdam or The Hauge. Our current system largely wastes everyone's time for no reason. Also, safety doesn't always have to mean making everyone wait longer.

https://beyondtheautomobile.com/2020/08/11/signals-for-change/

We need to press our politicians to reform the shitty, outdated standards our state, county, and city use when installing and upgrading intersections. The CMU smart signals are a nice start but we need to go much further.

I wonder how many hours of idling could be eliminated if even half of the signals/intersections downtown were upgraded.

Surprisingly Erie is pretty good with theirs....you hit 12th street right and can cruise for a while

Couldnt tell you the last time i was up there. Might be time for a bar crawl soon!

Was just in town visiting my family for Thanksgiving....Check out Bar Ronin in the West Erie Plaza....real solid food and drinks....expensive for Erie....slightly above avg for here and it's worth it.

Blvd of the Allies downtown sucks balls, when one light turns green the next block goes red.

because fu that’s why. all of our problems are self inflicted and we like it that way here.

Those specific lights are a part of a CMU and Google AI project. It’s a much harder problem to solve than you’d think. They’ve done it a lot of different ways over the years but that intersection is likely to be a disaster until they change the roads.

Getting from Grant St to the Point should take 45 seconds but takes an eternity

It’s cheaper to have random timed lights.

Agreed some drivers have done it to me as well. I was in the crosswalk and instead of waiting for me to clear and turn left, I find drivers turning and just barely missing me.

You ever notice how people dress around here? 2 decades behind? Same goes for infrastructure.

Carson st. is even worse. I've taken to walking on Sarah st. to get to and from 18th St. There's so many big gaps between lights and traffic is always backed up.(sometimes caused by buses).

I hate driving on that section of Penn. people crowding intersections, randomly double parking, trying to cut across Penn at the stop signs.. it’s the worst

There was never a light there until they wanted to attract a different clientele and change the landscape. Penn circle should have remained a one way. I don’t recall a big traffic problem till then.

This probably doesn't count because the parking lot in and of itself isn't a great setup, but my vote for the most poorly timed light on Banksville Rd. is the left turn into the Kuhns parking lot if you're heading south of the city. It's like 30 seconds long and I've sat at that light for 3+ cycles before being able to take my turn, waiting probably close to at least 7-10 or so minutes which is absurd. That whole section from the Potomac intersection onward is the worst part of that road for me.

A bigger disgrace is the complete lack of smart lights. Either the old school kind that have a magnetic sensor in the road, of the newer camera based ones.

These are a win at every intersection. They save gas and time, preventing unnecessary idling. And they have become cheap enough that I see them in little boonievilles. But not in Pittsburgh. Even at our busiest and craziest intersections.

I dont think Google had anything to do with it, it was CMU robotics, CMU's Traffic21, City of Pittsburgh, and East Liberty Development joint project. CMU also made the tech for transit signal priority to work on the future BRT corridors, and has been ready to go from PRT and CMU for many years while DOMI drags its feet.

The problem in East Lib is, as you alluded and another commenter mentioned, every road going through that area seems a main road. The roads would need to be significantly redesigned far beyond just changing the signaling to have any real improvement. There's no reason why Negley and Highland have about the same automobile traffic hierarchy, and same for Baum, Center, and Penn. Penn is a state owned road, Negley and Highland are city owned, not sure about the others. PennDOT is notoriously awful at working with localities to make the local situation better. They just care about "level of service" on their own roads, and pretty much nothing else. Maybe, if I give them some benefit, they care a little about deaths, but not enough to challenge the almighty LOS gods.

This is actually a newer development intended to improve pedestrian safety by allowing to pedestrians to establish themselves in the crosswalk before traffic is allowed to move. It has been proven to decrease pedestrian accidents. [source](https://highways.dot.gov/safety/proven-safety-countermeasures/leading-pedestrian-interval#:~:text=A%20leading%20pedestrian%20interval%20(LPI,to%20turn%20right%20or%20left.)

I wish our left turn signals were still 2 decades behind. These new ones with the flashing yellow arrow are goofy. I've been with a few people who ran reds because they didn't realize that the blinking yellow changed to a solid yellow.

And I pray that we never get HAWK beacons.

PA in general is terrible with red lights. But, NY isn’t much better. Especially in crowded places like Long Island and NYC.

The crazy thing about that intersection by Target is that every direction is either one lane immediately before or immediately after. It's an expensive intersection with lots of concrete and lights and traffic engineers to keeo tweaking it, when a simple roundabout would carry more traffic with less delay.

i bike that section of penn and a few other soul-sucking nexus points in this burgh and i feel as if i could easily handle any city after doing so for years.

everywhere else seems to be organised chaos. here, it's random chaos. unpredictable unpredictability. like a sea of toddlers having a tantrum during a sugar crash.

love this town.

That may be the intent, but traffic lights don't actually slow speeding. To the contrary, drivers feel the need to speed up because missing the light adds so much delay.

They should really do the traffic flow like what I saw in London. Light turns red for all cars in the intersection. All cars stop - all pedestrians walk. Then only the cars do their thing. Pedestrians should not be able to cross while cars are turning. God help you in downtown when you need to make a left, risking your life against oncoming traffic while dealing with not mowing down the endless stream of peds who also have a green light. And no one seems to bother with walk/don't walk. Green is go for peds no matter what.

Badly designed and inefficient lights encourage both speeding and road rage.

Seems in Pittsburgh they are not assessed and updated when traffic volumes change or adjusted to change at different times to account for traffic volume increases or decreases. I am sure our tax dollar pay for someone to do this but it clearly doesnt happen.

Flashing yellow arrows are better than awfully implemented red arrows that prevent you from turning and take forever to change even when traffic is clear on your way to the airport at 4AM.

I noticed this as soon as I got here as well. 1970's style set up

Sometimes some people just look around and then run those.. it’s me. I’m some people lol.

Dont get me started on the one by shop n save on Butler.

Had to drive all the way across Erie on 12th pretty often for work, can confirm. There’s a few intersections that will normally get you, but most of the 20+ lights along that street are green. One time I managed to time it so well that I went from one side of Erie to the other without seeing a single red light. That maneuver cut my commute time in half

I haven't noticed it lights around here, but I'm from Erie and my Dad is a civil engineer.

When I was a new driver, we had some family thing, and we both drove separately. We took 12th St home. It's like the most stoplights per mile of a 2-lane road, ever. I, being heavy on the gas at that point would accelerate quickly up to 40 (in a 35). My Dad did the slow Dad acceleration up to 35.

He ended up beating me home because he had momentum to get ahead of me right before it turned into one lane.

Once he was done gloating, he explained how the lights on 12th are timed to a specific speed to give you all greens if you do the posted speed limit, like that's the math it's based on. And also I'm a dumbass for wasting gas driving like that, it's bad for the car overall, etc.

Anyway the next time I drove on that road my father's voice came to me, like Yoda visiting Luke... *do the speed limit /u/CARLEtheCamry *. And driving down that road with the lights all turning green in front of me, like they were escorting me and it was pretty cool.

12th wasn't a pain in the ass - my driving was. No need to avoid it anymore.

That's not to say the timing on the lights isn't bad. But I bet some of the issues being discussed in this thread may have been caused by a little aggressive driving.

Lol now I want to know who's responsible for programming the lights by me.

I mean, his is the home of the “Pittsburgh left” for a reason.

Finally!! I'm not the only one who noticed!

I used to love going through Oakland to get home. Traffic was a breeze!! The best is when you're at the first red light starting on Forbes, because then you know you can speed up a tad at least till you reach Sennott Square building.

They must have hired the db’s who timed the lights in monroeville.

This light infuriates me

Ok cool those few intersections I get that but the other few thousand turn yellow as I’m approaching with no cars waiting in the other direction. It’s fuct and I hate it and technology could fix it but we’ve wasted to much money on bike lanes no one uses because they will get run over because of traffic that could be avoided because well you know the cycle. This man is right and you are not sorry friend

Some lights do this the problem is people walk to slowly, because it’s America so fat and lazy, and instead of a ped light being 10 or 15 seconds to cross like a normal human crossing a rode it’s 30 or 40 so it just backs up traffic more. Pedestrians are part of the problem. The signs say yield to people WITHIN the crosswalk but people just take there entitled ass out into the street

Bc Pittsburgh drivers do not respect right of way when turning left

NYC lights can turn green but youre not driving because youre stuck in traffic

NYC lights can turn green

But youre not driving because

Youre stuck in traffic

- arashmara

^(I detect haikus. And sometimes, successfully.) ^Learn more about me.

^(Opt out of replies: "haikusbot opt out" | Delete my comment: "haikusbot delete")

As someone who works at night in and around the burgh we need to bring the flashing lights until 6am to more intersections. I've wasted years of my life sitting at a ghost red light for no reason when there is not another car or pedestrian for miles... especially grant st downtown.

Because traffic isn’t that bad here

The lights stay green into and out of town until a car approaches from another direction.

It’s not just the traffic lights. The whole city is a confusing jumble of stroads, awkward/dangerous left turns across blind curves, narrow winding roads, and busy pedestrian areas. I see a lot of these intersections and think, this should be a roundabout or Left turns should be prohibited here. I hate to think of all of the excess deaths that happen each year from having a dangerous road layout.

Car brain thinks people walking around are entitled?

That's not an easy road to cross on foot.

I haven't finished reading but "keep Penn Circle one way" is probably the worst take on this thread. They can't finish the rest of that conversion fast enough for people who live around here

I have driven through roundabouts in a lot of countries, but can't imagine how one would be pedestrian friendly here. Or is that not a concern?

Because pedestrians have the right of way over cars turning left or right.

Dipshits will try to floor it to "beat" the pedestrians.

Maybe if you got your fat ass out of your car and tried walking you would understand that cars don't own the road.

You obviously don't live in the City or care about it's residents. Slow down.

The truth Pittsburghers can't handle.

45 seconds to travel 2 miles on a street with a half a dozen cross streets?

I drive this stretch pretty frequently and its still pretty stop and go whenever it's busy.

Thanksgiving morning was great though, no one was out at the shops so it was just green the entire way past that Cornerstone church. It was glorious.

Cost of upgrading a non actuated light (timed only) to mag loop or camera actuated is usually 50-100k per intersection.

Cost of adding bike lane painting is 5-15k per mile.

Ha. I was also raised by a civil engineer and was constantly taught “lessons” growing up.

Still have lots of family in road construction, and the insights and frustrations they share are too innumerable to communicate to the general public. It’s really frustrating that everyone assumes people are doing their life’s work trying to make things more difficult for someone else.

Except for the one by Target in East Liberty and the ones at the end of the 31st Street Bridge, that just don't work 25% of the time, forcing you to run the light after sitting there for 10 minutes.

The entire stretch on Penn from the tracks coming out of Wilkinsburg all the way until 5th avenue are trip lights. 100% of them are green to Penn Avenue traffic 100% of the time, until a car trips the light from a side street. They are not timed at all.

Which town? Pittsburgh? Out 51 they do? Na how about towards the rocks? Nope. Strip district? Liberty ave? You’re joking right? That’s a joke ha funny. Most likely when you are at a red light and it finally turns green the next light up a block away turns yellow. That is Pittsburgh. That’s what this post is saying and it is absolutely 100% correct

The good news is Pittsburgh is planning a “smart spines” project in the near future, where they’re going to upgrade intersections along many corridors and add modern vehicle detection, as well as adaptive signal timing

Pittsburgh drivers just don't respect other life, really...

I don't know if the timing of the yellow lights is a state law kind of thing, but I feel like they should be longer at places like Penn and 40th by the fire station and the inttersection of Highland and Center, where you have to stop long before the corner.

You have three choices at those intersections:

1. Speed up at the yellow so you don't block the fire station/turning lane for buses. The light will be red by the time you hit the intersection. Pray no one hits you and you don't hit anyone.

2. Stop on the yellow. You are now blocking access from the firestation/bus turning lane. A bus driver will scream at you while pointing at the line just behind your car.

3. Stop while the light is green because it's been green for a while and you don't want to get stuck where you're not supposed to be. Since this is only an issue during heavy traffic, you surely won't be murdered by the person in the giant pickup truck behind you, who has been tailgating you since you refused to run over a pedestrian at the last turn. This is also why you can't back up if you've crossed the line already.

If they would just make the yellow light longer in those situations, all would be good.

Oh geez I found the 7 people that ride bikes in Pittsburgh. Relax I wasn’t saying anything bad about bicycles, I know you can’t do that here people will destroy you. I’m saying our city planners suck at everything from public transportation to timing of light and placement of things like bike lanes.

Maximum inefficiency

That's the million dollar question. Even new lights at reconstructed intersections don't use smart lights. Pittsburgh likes everything dumb including their lights.

It's half a mile from Grant Street to Point state park. If the lights were synced up like there are on 5th Ave in Oakland then it could easily be done.

Finally. Only 10-15 years late. Typical.

Eh, this is true compared to large cities, but do you really want to give the city/county/state that free pass for not fixing the limited traffic issues we do have here? Other than the tunnel jams and stupid short merge ramps with stop signs, Dutch style lights and intersections would fix 80%+ of of our traffic problems.

It's astounding to me that lights aren't automated to the point that they sense traffic and can intelligently adjust. I mean we have self driving cars ffs...

I’m mostly pro bike lane for the record, but don’t they have to be repainted every couple years or so like the rest of the roads, negating much of the cost advantage?

IMO we would see more benefits by upgrading intersections before adding bike lanes in areas. This would make the bike lanes faster, safer, and also improve access for cars and pedestrians.

This would probably also cut down on people bitching about “useless” bike lanes that appear as such because they are incomplete and non-contiguous.

Old man chimes in. Fifty some years ago it seemed like everyone knew that if you had the green on Fifth Avenue in Oakland, you could drive at 27 mph and probably not get a red. Is that still true?

It increases speeding imo. If you just finally got green and the light ahead of you turns yellow, the inclination to gun it rather than sitting another three minutes is very strong

Just install fucking bollards and be done with it

The lights on Liberty seem coordinated if you drive at the speed limit.

This is likely true of other streets.

Oh there are definitely ongoing, nuanced costs to both.

DOMI has done a decent job timing bike lane painting with resurfacing, so the paint crew is already there and the cost drops. On the flip side, complete street intersection upgrades (bike boxes, the retro reflective polymer tape that lasts longer than paint, etc) can balloon intersection upgrade costs closer to 500k, but definitely provide the improvements you called out.

My point to the “BiKe LaNeS CoSt MoNeY” comment was the highlight that it’s a balancing act, and simply saying bike lanes are why we don’t have good traffic lights is just wildly out of touch with how these things work. And that doesnt even factor in traffic analysis, neighborhood complaints, federal grant funding streams, politics, yadda yadda.

So a more nuanced response like yours is welcomed. Cheers!

corner of penn and 6th is like that downtown. as a pedestrian, it's nice. no idea why every other intersection isn't the same

Funny coincidence, just last night I was mentally preparing a post here about the best light in the city, which might just be Herron and Bigelow. That one has serious sensors and options. If there is no traffic, the main one (Bigelow) turns red, but the green is YOUR street for YOU, then if there are no other cars on the side streets at that five-way intersection, it goes back to Bigelow. If there are no cars in the turning lanes, the turning lane signal stays red.

Best light evar.

Because you can't time a 5.5 way intersection well.

We've wasted so much money on plowing streets when we could be updating traffic lights /s

This is an absurd expectation, it's a city

Interesting point. You think they would set it up so the light is red if you're speeding, but if you're doing the speed limit, it turns green just in time.

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It's not an expectation, but it's not impossible. Before all the construction in Oakland you could go from Bigelow and 5th all the way to the Boulevard of the Allies ramp without stopping for one red light.

This happens so much at the west end bridge, on the north side end. Both sides of the west end bridge are just poorly designed.

This isn’t quite what the op is talking about but in Forest Hills some intersections have smart lights with sensors so that side streets only go green when there is a vehicle.

Lots of streets in Pittsburgh have them as well. I was referring to the cross streets in E Lib, all of which are heavily used, so a sensor wouldn't do much good, as there would almost always be cross traffic waiting.
Another commenter said that the cross streets further out Penn have the sensors.

There are many proponents of this. There are also lots of people who are deeply against this who also have valid reasons. This exists in PGH in places where pedestrians at the light tend to outnumber automobiles at the light.

most roads in pittsburgh are two way traffic so it’s near impossible to time it for both directions

Proper roundabouts work reasonably well with pedestrians in most places but in PGH, the attitude towards pedestrians of most people who drive is utterly atrocious. On top of that I have never seen any enforcement by police for failure to yield to pedestrians even when it happens right in front of them (and similarly I see police fail to yield to pedestrians as well). So I don't think the pedestrian experience is going to be good at a roundabout in PGH but I don't think it's going to be any worse than it is anywhere else in the city.

>downtown sucks balls

[Driving] downtown sucks balls.

This is where Route 22 in Monroeville flexes. I think the light timing is superb.