[mikepurvis]

In Kitchener (just west of Toronto), we have a bunch of intersections where there are two possible changes. For a car-triggered change (from the inductive loop in the pavement), the light just changes for a few seconds, to get the car through. If you push the beg button, you get the pedestrian change, where there's a momentary walk signal followed by a countdown.

I get why this exists in terms of not having cars on the busy street waiting for a countdown when there's no actual person there, but I find it very frustrating that there's basically zero chance that I will just "get a green" crossing the busy street, since it's such a narrow window now. And because I can't trigger the road sensor with my bicycle, it also means I have to ride up on the sidewalk to get to the button.

I would really rather it was just a timer.

[goodcanadian]

Interesting about the road sensor. In Vancouver (years ago, admittedly), I had no problem triggering the road sensor with my bike.

[mikepurvis]

Interesting! I've never had success triggering them, though that's not surprising given I'm on an aluminum and carbon frame.

There was actually a kickstarter a few years ago to build a magnetic loop you could put on your bike to trigger the sensor via a button press, but unfortunately it didn't meet its funding target and seems to have gone underground: https://www.veloloop.com/faq/

[toast0]

If you've got metal rims, and the loops are reasonably tuned, you should be able to trigger them if you're well positioned. Apparently, adding a copper wire loop under your rim tape will work for carbon fiber rims as well.

There's some pretty good information here: https://www.bikewalknc.org/bicycle-detection-at-traffic-sign...

But I've been lucky enough to have California government on my side, I guess.