The ones I saw are slightly different from the RRFBs shown in the video at

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lrYjlD14qIU

as there are also beacons facing the path users waiting at the ends of the crosswalk.

Unlike ordinary traffic signals or the HAWK beacon, the RRFBs if used alone, as at these crossings, do not offer anything equivalent to a yellow-to-red sequence for the traffic in the cross street, and also there is no traffic signal or ped head for the path. The beacons facing voth the road and the path turn on immediately when a path user pushes a button. The beacons don’t give an indication of when the motor traffic actually is expected to have stopped, as a red traffic signal or ped head does. I found this confusing and I think that other path users and some motorists also did, due to the lack of a transition interval.

There is a recorded voice message in the box with the pushbutton indicating to wait until the cross traffic stops, but it is only audible from nearby.

I shot a short video clip at one of the crossings. The clip begins shortly after I pressed the button to turn on the beacon, as a pedestrian finishes running across the street. Then a couple of motor vehicles fail to yield and another stops halfway across the crosswalk. My video is online at

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6nKL0PYNBrA

The intersection is this one, at 22nd Avenue North (Google Maps satellite view). I was standing at the north side of the intersection (toward the top of the picture).

http://tinyurl.com/6dpqf4f

Of course, this is only one example, and it may be that my standing and not entering the crosswalk influenced the behavior of the drivers in the nearer lane, but I don’t think that it could have influenced those in the other lane. There was alreayd a pedestrian in the crosswalks, and a cyclist was approaching and waiting to cross.

I think that the application of RRFBs at path crossings is very different from the use of flashing beacons at intersections where motorists also have a traffic light and the purpose of the RRFB is to alert them to the need to yield to parallel bicycle traffic when turning. I am curious as to which application was the one studied in the recent research which reported a high rate of compliance.

The excess delay mentioned in other comments on this post is a control problem. Traffic signals create excess delay because controllers are so primitive that they cannot determine that nobody is crossing any more. Neither, often, do they detect bicyclists approaching intersections. These problems can and should be addressed through improved technology – in particular, video and ultrasonic detection.

Where do I start…

First, it was my pleasure to host you in St. Petersburg and I’m very pleased your blog has generated such back and forth discussion.

Second, I’m sorry I’m so late into this discussion, just having found your blog google searching “RRFB” to see what’s new. It wasn’t that many months ago there was nothing, so YES – I think education is required.

Third – just a few thoughts….

Yes, I am from Toronto and I was shocked when I moved to Florida to see how bad mid-block motorist yielding compliance was here. I recall the “Point Your Way To Safety” rule and actually tried it here as an experiment. Believe it or not I did manage to receive 70% motorist yielding compliance and 3 calls to the Police Department about the idiot stopping traffic on a busy road. No mention at all that I was in a crosswalk…so I do believe that the “Toys” are required as part of a full Triple – E Program. That is what we did here in St. Petersburg, starting first with the Engineering. That got us over 80% compliance right out of the gate, from a base rate of 3%, as you can read in the report. That was sustained for 2-years before we even started the Enforcement component. Believe it or not, even with the funding the police were reluctant to go out. So, I brought in an FDOT program to train them and to date we have not lost one appeal in court. Yes, we started out with a lot of citations, but even today on a 3-hour operation we are averaging only 10 to 12 citations with monthly, rather that weekly operations and only at new RRFB installations.

Yes, we have seen spill over compliance at other non-RRFB crosswalk, but that compliance rate there is still low. So, we are continuing with the Engineering at high volume crossings as well as the Enforcement and Education. After all, its taken years for the motorists to behave so poorly against the most vulnerable roadway users, we’re not going to change that over night with only one of the “E’s”.

Hope that this gets back to your readers and helps with a bit of the background. I’ll check back and answer any questions as well. Keep up the good work.

I do know that I saw a few pedestrian crossings with noise makers being installed in the late ’80′s(?) or early 90′s, but since then I have seen no other new ones installed.

Note that I mostly find pedestrian signals to be ineffective even if I wait, because if I don’t have my monocular with me, I’ll have a hard time for telling whether I can go or not. Looking at the pedestrian signal is also not that easy to see if I stand too close to it but I cannot stand in the crosswalk in the middle of the street. I did not have any choice but to not trust the pedestrian signals since I use my best judgment as much as I can, due to my visual impairment.

And consistently, which is why I have a problem with holiday traffic law enforcement. It sends the message that it’s okay to speed all the other times of the year, but not on holiday weekends.

There have been a few times I would have liked a light at Forsyth. But overall, the refuge median makes crossing much easier.

That bush is only part of the problem westbound. There is a driveway on the other side of it. Twice I’ve had motorists come out of that driveway on two wheels and blow through just as I was about to cross. Both times I had activated the light, so they ran the red.

They do need to do something about sight-lines looking south. I think that’s in the domain of the City of Orlando, but you can probably report it with Metroplan’s spot improvement form.

Btw, somewhat off topic. There’s a huge bush or tree or weed on Bennett that makes it hard to see oncoming traffic when crossing west bound. Can someone remove it…lol.

It would be easier to catch people using their horn illegally to harass cyclists. After this incident we knocked the idea around as a possible component of the civility initiative.