Sorry to hear that the person reporting this feels that pressing a button for a protected pedestrian phase is somehow begging, but reaching for and opening a door handle is not. The signal technician fixed the broken button. The Department of Public Works has resolved this request. Thanks for helping to keep Burlington a great place to live and work.

Thanks for fixing this request!

If a passenger or driver of a vehicle at the head of a line of vehicles needed to be "reaching for and opening a (vehicle) door handle" and then push a button to activate the vehicle traffic signal, would that be begging? Or would it be better termed grovelling? But hey, thanks for promptly fixing that within your power to fix!

Responded to the pejorative term "beg" which a couple of people like to apply to pedestrian buttons. I find it funny that when walking from A to B other objects like door handles or elevator buttons seem to be exempt from this classification. Pressing a simple button for a walk signal does two things: it shows an intent to cross, and the direction it is desired to cross in. Something even the most sophisticated passive detector cannot do, unless we have "people lanes" and "people stop bars." To my knowledge the first car detector in the late 1920s was a microphone that required honking the horn. NOT very popular with the neighbors.

You probably know better than I that there are touchless, software-integrated pedestrian sensors on the market. When do you think we might have our first test application here in Burlington? How about Main and Church as a great spot to showcase this technology that can improve both pedestrian safety and efficient crossings?

"Pedestrians often do not activate the Walk signal because they believe the button already has been pressed, do not think it is working, or cannot access the button." (For more info and the entire report from which the above quote appeared, I beg you to read the 2001 Federal Highway Administration report at this link:

https://www.fhwa.dot.gov/publications/research/safety/00097/00097.pdf

"Pressing a simple button for a walk signal does two things..."

A THIRD thing buttons (fomites) do is efficiently transfer pathogens between people (susceptibles).