Letter: Confused by Berkeley's Traffic Signal Countdown Timers

By Steven Murphy

I'll bet I'm not the only driver or pedestrian in the area who is frequently confused by Berkeley's traffic signal countdown timers. It seems that some of them count down to an impending change from "walk" to "don't walk."

I think there's often a few seconds delay after the timer reaches zero, but the meaning is at least almost clear: it's time to get out of the street at zero or maybe a few seconds after zero.

I'm more-or-less good with that.

But some of them seem to count down to...well, I don't know what they're counting down to, because nothing seems to happen.

I think I've seen some of them, having reached zero, after a while go back to ten and start the countdown again. I wonder how someone is supposed to know which sequence the timer is on. Maybe I'm missing something.

And there's one on MLK that — I'm not kidding — counts down to the pedestrian signal changing to "walk." Unless it's for pedestrians starting a foot race to the next corner, I really don't get that one. Even if it's starting a pedestrian race, "ready, set, go" would seem sufficient.

I'm guessing that that last light is out of order, but there are enough of the count-down-to-nothing signals, I wonder if they haven't been programmed that way for some reason.

It seems to me that Berkeley would do well to select one intuitive protocol and stick with it throughout the city. Yes, a foolish consistency etc., but this is an instance when consistency doesn't seem at all foolish — much to the contrary.

Consistency here would seem to me to support traffic and pedestrian safety.