Walk

A fun article in today’s Honolulu Advertiser on the often non-functional crosswalk buttons at Honolulu intersections. (It’s a localization of this piece in the New York Times.) I think it’s a little muddled, though.

It leads with the statement: “Most of those little ‘walk’ buttons at hundreds of intersections in Honolulu won’t speed up the time it takes for a traffic light to change, city officials say.” Well, sure. But a lot (if not most) of those buttons definitely make a difference in whether you get a walk signal at all, as well as how long you get to cross… which the article later acknowledges. The piece flatly states that buttons at only 35 percent of all intersections don’t do anything. But that’s hardly “most.”

Then again, I’m the “Type A” mentioned that loves punching that little button, whether or not it works.