Description

Numerous and continuous nuisance tripping of Main St. HAWK signal at night.

I AM SO EMBARRASSED IT HAS TAKEN ME MONTHS/YEARS TO REALIZE THIS WAS HAPPENING!

I only bike across the Longfellow Bridge from Boston to Cambridge at night a few times a month, and it always seems like the HAWK signal is flashing when I pass it, usually when there are no pedestrians. I finally came to the realization recently that this might not be a coincidence. And it's not!

Standing at the [former] Red Cross building and watching at 11:55pm last night, it is clear that the HAWK signals runs in one direction, then the next, then there is a 10–15 second pause, and the cycle starts over. (It's a little challenging to find a vantage point where you can see both the Boston-bound and Cambridge-bound signal aspects. Maybe if you stand in the middle of the island? I did not try).

As far as I can tell, this always happens at night, and has been going on for months or years. I'm not sure why it doesn't seem to happen during the day, maybe it is temperature sensitive. Or maybe I just notice it much more at night? Or it relates to traffic volume? Vibration or lack thereof?

(I suppose it's possible that it is ACTUALLY PROGRAMMED to behave this way deliberately, as an attempt at traffic calming during low demand hours? If so, it seems like an abuse of the system and kind of bait-and-switchy. But I'm happy to listen to the justification.)