I have mixed feelings about traffic lights. When they are green, I like them; on red, not so much. And the longer they stay on red, the more annoyed I get. That is if I’m in a car. If I’m on foot, my rage ratchets up with every second of red man.
I spend a lot of time in York. The walk into town from my mother-in-law’s house takes me across what I believe to be Britain’s worst traffic lights for pedestrians. If you want to experience these lights for yourself, they are the ones near Micklegate, where Blossom Street intersects with Queen Street and Nunnery Lane. If they were operating like this in the ninth century, it is no wonder the Vikings were so ratty by the time they entered the city.
As you wait to cross Queen Street, wondering if the green man will ever show himself again, your plans for the day wither away, along with your hopes and dreams. You won’t be going wherever you are heading, today or any other day. No, you will spend it here, on this street corner, outside the Windmill Inn. You could probably pop in, drink a pint of ale, eat a bag of crisps, use the toilet and come out to find the green man still hasn’t appeared.
It is only tourists and sporadic visitors like me who get antsy. The local people know the ropes, poor souls. This is their normal. Like dead-eyed cashiers in bare-shelved Soviet supermarkets, they stand and wait. They take their punishment. I stand with them, shifting from foot to foot, sweat gathering in my deeply furrowed brows, occasionally emitting a low groan of sheer, anguished despair. It hurts me, it physically hurts.
And then it happens. The green man appears. And after all that wait, you get about 10 seconds with him before he vanishes again. The people who live here know this, of course, so they are out of the traps like greyhounds. Some of the younger ones might bring sprinters’ starting blocks to get going even quicker. And older pedestrians demonstrate an impressive turn of pace, conditioned as they are by years of practice at this spot.
I am told there used to be one of those pedestrian stopping points in the middle of this road, but they took it away. So you must cross this Rubicon in one go, or not at all.
The last time I was there, I lingered awhile, stopwatch in hand. I clocked the time between green men as 2 minutes 7.39 seconds, and the time with the green man at around 10 seconds. I reckon the road is about 10 metres wide. OK, a pace of one metre a second won’t win you an Olympic medal, but it’s still quite a big ask.
To be fair, I know of no other city so consistently jam-packed with people and cars, and I wouldn’t like the job of organising it, but I still wanted some answers. I emailed York council. Tragic, I know. Even more tragic than standing there with a stopwatch, I suppose. But to my joy, I got the most informative of replies, from a transport manager called Christian Wood. There is not space to share everything I have learned, but suffice to say that, at busy times, the space between pedestrian phases can be as long as 2 minutes and 40 seconds – the longest in York. The problem is that the junction generally can’t cope with the volume of traffic. Also, short though the crossing time is, once on the crossing, you are safe to keep going after the green man’s 10 seconds is up. And, best of all, if anyone is struggling to get across in time, sensors will pick this up and delay the traffic. Clever that.
I am told a major consultation on transport in the city is imminent. I hereby volunteer to stand by that crossing with a clipboard, garnering pedestrians’ views in two-minute sessions before waving them on their way.
• Adrian Chiles is a Guardian columnist
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