The Albany Common Council met virtually Thursday evening.
Mayor Kathy Sheehan has often touted Albany as a walkable city.
Councilors considered a resolution introduced by 6th ward councilor Gabriella Romero, recognizing the importance of walkability. It calls on the Albany Police Department's Traffic Safety Division to adopt a policy ensuring that pedestrian signals, "walk" buttons, are automatically included whenever traffic signals are changed, upgraded or installed.
A number of residents joined the meeting to support the resolution, saying the signals are often poorly timed and some buttons are non-responsive. Others noted the buttons are often inaccessible in winter after snowstorms. Among them former 6th ward councilor Richard Conti, who thinks the current so-called "beg button" system is problematic for densely populated neighborhoods where pedestrian traffic is heaviest.
"Often these buttons are not located near the pedestrian crossing, or may be obscured from easy sight, and the need to wait, even when the vehicle traffic signal may be with you," Conti said." "It breeds disregard for pedestrian traffic signals. Being a walker myself, my own experience with beg buttons is confusing. I often observe traffic signal changes after I push a button. But when I would logically expect a pedestrian crossing signal to activate, I see a whole new cycling of traffic signals and preferential treatment for motor vehicles. This boggles the mind."
Hudson Park Neighborhood Association President Jeff Crumpton told the panel he and his family are "heavy users" of sidewalks and crosswalks and encounter challenging intersections daily.
He says the walk buttons do not provide safe access.
"First, there is an inconsistent use of how these crosswalks are handled in areas with high pedestrian volume throughout the city. And secondly," Crumpton continued, "this drives pedestrians to jaywalk instead of walking to or waiting for another two cycles to cross the intersection safely. Unfortunately, we see the disastrous results of too many cases with pedestrians being gravely injured or killed. We know that, we know these areas in the city all too well. And we should take meaningful action to abate this conflict between vehicles and pedestrians. In short, we support this common sense change to city code and hope that existing intersections will have changes made to prioritize pedestrian safety."
9th ward councilor Meghan Keegan weighed in:
"From my understanding, because it's a resolution, it's non-binding," said Keegan. "So we're asking traffic safety to do a policy but we're not putting them in a position where it's fiscally recquired. The only reason why I express concern is because rerouting traffic lights is a much more complicated endeavor than one might expect."
Keegan’s concern aside, all 12 councilors in attendance voted "yes" and the resolution passed, as did another resolution supporting universal child care. Panelists also expressed interest in an Albany Police Department internal investigation report on officers covering their badges with black tape last April as they dispersed protestors from outside South Station.
That report surfaced publicly Friday with APD admitting that "policy with respect to badges was clearly violated." The Times Union reported Friday that Chief Eric Hawkins blamed the incident on "a miscommunication by a now-retired commander" as part of the internal report.
