New Concurrent Pedestrian Signals with Vehicle Detection

Added: 2026-05-26

[00:00:00]This is the intersection of Winchester Ave and Munson Street in New Haven, Connecticut. This used to be an exclusive pedestrian phase intersection, so all four crosswalks would get a walk signal and all vehicles would get a red.

[00:00:13]It's just been converted to a concurrent crossing phase operation, so pedestrians can cross with the parallel vehicle green light when they hit the button.

[00:00:23]And it looks like the vehicle detection has been upgraded as well. It's been operating really efficiently, serving calls as they come up.

[00:00:33]And so we'll see here the signal reverts to resting in green on Winchester.

[00:00:37]And the pedestrian button is kind of acting like a hot button. If there's no calls over here on Munson, if I missed pressing the button before that phase come up, I can press the button and immediately get the walk signal.

[00:00:49]to cross Munson Street. Munson Street, walk sign is And now that green will hold on Winchester until the walk signal times out.

[00:01:07]If there's still no calls on Munson, I can hit it again. Wait, Munson Street.

[00:01:11]Get another walk signal. on to cross Munson Street.

[00:01:16]Flyers have been posted at all the corners to alert people to the new crossing pattern, let them know that the pedestrian phase has changed.

[00:01:25]And if I press the walk signal to cross Munson while the light's still red, Wait.

[00:01:33]there will be an LPI phase for the pedestrian that comes up first before the vehicle gets their green.

[00:01:40]Here's an example of that detection working. So we have a car pulling up on Munson Street and the light will immediately change.

[00:01:49]And get the green light to Munson.

[00:01:56]There's also a good left turn and right turn overlap here, so the left turn arrow is on when someone's in the [music] left turn lane on Munson and the right turn arrow is on for Winchester.

[00:02:07]That's because we have a dedicated right turn lane on Winchester and dedicated left turn lane on Munson, so they can go at the same time using the arrow phase, nice efficient operation.

[00:02:21]Here we can see the signals resting in green on Winchester, so I'm going to press the button to cross Winchester.

[00:02:27]Wait.

[00:02:28]The light will immediately change and give a concurrent phase.

[00:02:34]It's going to skip that left turn green arrow, there's no one waiting in the left turn lane, and immediately go to the parallel pedestrian and green light on Munson.

[00:02:46]So, this is a good example of when pedestrian buttons can actually be pretty useful.

[00:02:50]Right, we could just put this signal on pedestrian recall and have it cycle between each phase, but having the buttons, having the video detection for cars makes this a really efficient signal that is responsive to any calls that get put in from cars or pedestrians.