davis_square | Reminder: Stop for red lights

Just a reminder for all of you drivers out there that the two lights on Alewife Brook Parkway between Mass Ave and Broadway are, in fact, traffic lights that do, in fact, turn red on occasion. They do not simply flash green and yellow all the time.

They turn red when a pedestrian wants to cross the road. Please stop when the light is red so you do not mow down some innocent pedestrian who is trying to cross in a crosswalk with a red light.

I say this because I am a runner and my long run takes me down Alewife Brook Parkway. I do not want to have to cross the road, but the sidewalk only goes half the distance on the south-east side of the road. I get to a crossing, I press the button, the light turns red, and then EVERY TIME a car comes flying through at a very high rate of speed. One driver even flicked me off and honked his horn at me.

I normally have other problems with drivers and crosswalks while on my runs, but this is the one place where I consistently feel like if I make one wrong move I might get seriously hurt.

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I always wondered whether those lights turned red or not... Flashing green lights are kind of confusing. I wonder why they didn't just go and put in a flashing yellow, seems like that would work better... like the one on ABP down by medford square.

I feel the same way driving through the rotaries on that road. It's not just pedestrians that so many drivers here have a flagrant disregard for.

Be safe.

I just had a flash (hah!) of insight into this. For flashing yellows that turn red, they first turn solid yellow before turning red. So solid yellow might take a bit longer for the brain to distinguish from flashing yellow. So you have a flashing green (which means the same as flashing yellow) which turns to solid yellow before turning red, and that flashing green to solid yellow transition is a lot easier to spot.

I regularly see cars speeding through the red crosswalk lights in Powderhouse Sq., sometimes even in view of cops, and nobody ever gets pulled over. We've taught Somerville drivers that red lights don't mean anything.

What makes it even more confusing is that it seems that one of the lights flashes green, and the other flashes yellow.

They could at least make it consistent - the two lights are within about 200 meters of each other.

So if yellow means caution... what does a flashing green mean? I've always wondered why they don't just stick to flashing yellow.

If solid green means GO, then flashing green clearly means GO! GO! GO! GO! ...

ugh, i swear that the powderhouse rotary is going to kill me one of these days.

Flashing green means "this is a green traffic light that only turns red for special occasions, so normally you don't need to worry about it".

Unless you're in Canada, in which case it means "oncoming traffic has a red light so you can turn left". Those flash faster though.

In Canada flashing green means "you have a green light but the cars opposite you don't, so it's safe to turn left."

Ah, I didn't read down before I replied with the "Canada" response to prog. I think that system is very sensible and useful.

i *think* flashing green means that you can pretty much always go (as there isn't going to be any opposing traffic), but there's a crosswalk so it has the potential to change to red despite the lack of opposing traffic.

There's a similar problem at a spot near Sullivan Square where you can either turn left onto a rotary or keep going straight to the highway. I bike past there, and there's no way for me to make it from the right side of the road to the rotary on the left without pressing the crosswalk button and getting the red light, but I have been almost clipped at least five times by people who don't even slow down at the light, let alone stop, and someone almost always runs it.

My favorite is when the lights are red, I'm in the cross walk and a car blows its horn for me to get out of the way!

I'm with you - I know that rotary is going to kill me one day. We love this neighborhood, but we definitely won't buy here because of that stupid rotary.

Somerville could solve all their budgetary problems if they gave out tickets for running the red lights in that rotary!

I see this all the time at that crosswalk on Somerville Ave behind the Star Market. I never take a step out onto that street without making sure that traffic in both directions is stopped, because after that light turns red there will invariably be at least one car that runs it, and sometimes two or three.

Reminder: Stop for red lights

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The way I read it

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