Jake CoppingerJul 10, 2023

Why do pedestrians in Sydney wait so long at traffic lights? I tried to find out the answer and wrote a blog post: https://jakecoppinger.com/2023/07/shining-a-light-on-the-traffic-signals-of-sydney/

I cover previously unpublished maps of signal timings, ODbL crowdsourced data from a open source website I built, how it costs $200 to buy data on a single intersection from the government, details on signal programming in a proprietary format, comparisons with best practice and more.

#urbanism #planning #walking #maps #openstreetmap #sydney #australia

Shining a Light on the Traffic Signals of Sydney - Jake Coppinger

This blog post provides an overview of traffic signal operation in Sydney (focusing on the inner city), based on technical documentation, conversations with government & industry experts and data I've collected after building Better Intersections.

Jake Coppinger - Jake Coppinger's blog and portfolio. I'm currently working as a full stack software engineer at Atlassian in the Linking Platform team, improving the features and reliability of Smart Link experiences in products like Confluence, Jira and Trello.
Show threadInsertUserJul 11, 2023

@jake A few thoughts. Does Aus not have a freedom of information law that can be used to beat the government into giving up this data without fees?

Why would anyone call their traffic system a synonym for 💩 and then use that as the target for usability?

Has there been any uptake of pedestrian buttons with tactile indicators for "safe to walk" to give a signal for visually impaired users while muted for the night?

Show threadJake Coppinger

@InsertUser Thanks for replying! Australia does have freedom of information laws - I'm not sure if someone has attempted to retrieve the traffic data or already been knocked back.

It is an unfortunate acronym!

Yes, our PB5 traffic buttons also do vibrate when it's safe to walk (a tactile signal). I haven't dived into the accessibility suitability of these in the absence of audio.

Jul 11, 2023 at 10:31pmWeb
Show threadInsertUserJul 12, 2023

@jake I've not encountered the vibrating button type. The UK ones I've used have a little spinning cone thing underneath.

No idea if they're actually useful for the blind, but I've found them useful when doing something on my phone.