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# I keep pushing the walk button and nothing happens
- URL: https://www.thefrictionlog.com/08500/
- Published: 2026-10-18T12:11:12.000Z
- Updated: 2026-10-18T12:11:12.000Z
- Description: Filed: the 1980s · Patched · walk signals that come on by themselves
- Author: The Clerk
- Tags: Patched

*Five presses. The light has not noticed me.* — Commuter, 1988

Whether the button works depends on the corner. New York put in walk buttons, then got computer-controlled signals, and by the late 1980s the city had switched most of them off and left them up. At those, the light changes on its own schedule, and a dead button looks just like a live one. A city traffic official told the Times in 2004 that people get the walk signal regardless. At other corners the button is how you ask for the walk signal. The ones that beep and buzz help people who can't see the light. Rockville, Maryland, and parts of Arlington, Virginia, made the walk signal come on by itself in 2020\. I've seen worse ideas. Not many.

**For now**: press the button once and wait; where it works, that is the request, and pressing again won't hurry it.

### The full file

The first signal in the city that waited for a press is believed to date to 1964, the brainstorm of traffic commissioner Henry Barnes, the same man behind the Barnes Dance, where all traffic stops and pedestrians cross diagonally. Most of the buttons went in during the 1970s, usually where a big road met a small street. The big road stayed green until a button press or a car sensor said otherwise.

Nobody took the dead ones down. When the Times counted in 2004, the city still had 3,250 walk buttons, and more than 2,500 of them did nothing. Removing one costs $300 to $400 an intersection, and the deputy commissioner said there's always a better need for the money. The Times checked more than 30 intersections and found one working button, in Little Neck, Queens.

Elsewhere the buttons got a different kind of attention. In June 2020 Rockville set all 48 of its signals to give a walk signal every cycle, so nobody had to touch a button during the pandemic. Arlington posted Do Not Push signs. After Labor Day in 2021 Arlington put 93 intersections back the old way, but busy walking corridors kept the automatic signal. Press it once, then stand there like everyone else.