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LED walk on bottom
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Windsor, Ontario, is the first and only city ive been to that uses the traditional double section pedestrian signal with LED walk on the bottom. All new double section pedestrian signals have the timers everywhere else ive been. The signal on the left was likely a retrofit, while the ones on the right are only a few years old. I know Fortran does sell individual LED walk modules as well.
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I also wondered why Canada never approved the incandescent look crosswalk LEDs, they make them with the US symbols but I've never seen one with the Canadian symbols.
So when RIDOT converted to LEDs, it made the conversion pretty simple since the signals were already one section. The few incandescent 2-section units were retrofitted with the man/hand on the top and the "WALK" section left alone. But then when they required the countdowns for all intersections (which I think is stupid; only thing they're good for is timing how long you have to drive through the intersection until the vehicle signal turns red lol) they had to replace all the signals with 2-section units. So at first it was a help but then it came back to bite them... There's still plenty of intersections with no countdowns though.
I think the timers are actually more dangerous. Especially when it counts down to 0 and the light doesn't change or the walk symbol comes back. on.
Toronto was interesting in the sense that by the time they decided to mass changeout the old incandescent CGE pedestrian signals, countdowns were already taking off so many of the CGEs got countdowns when they refitted to LED. Apparently a city report stated that converting the CGEs to countdown was cheaper than the labour costs of reconfiguring the signal arms to accept single section pedestrian signals.
York Region did their mass changeout in 2003 and installed a lot of single section pedestrian signals, those got reconfigured for countdowns around 2007 by adding a new section and reconfiguring the signal arms again. They didn't replace the single section signals though, they added a section and so you can a lot of frankensignals in York Region such as a Eagle bolted to a Fortran countdown section.
Yeah, I'm not a fan of the countdowns that go back to a walk sign or the ones where the amber is delayed by a few seconds. Technically you can argue that the countdowns are not intended for the driver but everyone knows the drivers all look at the countdowns. I never got why they did the return to walk at 0, if the intersection is a semi-actuated (side street only gets a green when there's traffic) they should just hold the main street light at green and walk until the controller detects a vehicle or a pedestrian.
https://www.google.ca/maps/@49.1304779,-123.0920308,3a,20.4y,98.55h,95.33t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1so6Lk0QiUJNOmOq0eK0l1GA!2e0!7i13312!8i6656?hl=en