Traffic engineer Tym Pieglowski was frustrated at how long the commute to his children’s school took each morning, so he and his two sons ditched the car and took up cycling.
Then, one of the 17 times the trio had to stop at intersections and traffic lights, his youngest son asked a simple question: “Why can the cars go along next to us, but we have to be stopped?”
Tym Pieglowski with his sons, Zachary, 6, and Kai, 3, is trying to get the pedestrian walk times increased at traffic lights like this one near his home in Maroubra.Credit: Janie Barrett
This was the moment the 19-year traffic engineering veteran says the penny dropped.
“The solution is simple,” Pieglowski said of an idea he is championing at the Committee for Sydney’s Sydney Summit next week, inspired by his son’s question: change traffic rules so anyone travelling along the main road – either walking, cycling or driving – has the right of way, and anyone wanting to intercept is forced to give way. He describes it as “an imaginary zebra crossing on every road and intersection”.
The change would mean pedestrians walking in the same direction of traffic as the roads would, when approaching an intersection, have a green pedestrian light for as long as drivers get a green light.
Pieglowski said anything done to improve the way pedestrians interact with traffic lights would lead to “healthier and happier Sydneysiders” able to walk around their areas with fewer interruptions. But the changes require a radical rethink of how we interact with our roads.
Following decades of road rules and policies that put cars at the centre of urban life, cities across the globe have spent much of the past 20 years attempting to give pedestrians a greater influence on the street.
Throughout Sydney’s CBD, Transport for NSW has reduced the traffic light cycle from 110 seconds to 90 seconds. Green lights for pedestrians were made automatic during the pandemic, meaning walkers no longer need to press a button to get a green signal.
The push for improved walking spaces came to a head in 2023 when Sydney software engineer Jake Coppinger began crowdsourcing a survey of the worst pedestrian wait times at local intersections.
Transport for NSW is responsible for all signal settings, but the City of Sydney is advocating for more changes to signals that would leave no pedestrian waiting longer than 45 seconds for the green light to cross a road, with an ideal wait time of 30 seconds. It is also pushing for “more pedestrian priority signals where the default setting is a green light for people walking”.
Transport for NSW calculates green lights based on an average walking speed of 1.2 metres per second, a spokesperson said. This can be reduced to 0.8 metres a second at intersections frequently used by slow walkers, including around schools and nursing homes.
The spokesperson said Transport had improved 560 intersections since 2015 to give pedestrians more time to begin crossing.
“The NSW government regularly reviews road rules for opportunities to improve safety and welcomes ideas for detailed review as to both their practicality and safety.”
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