Audible crosswalk buttons to debut

A 5-year-old boy recently wrote a letter to city directors asking Little Rock to replace small crosswalk buttons with larger ones that have voice commands.

“The little buttons are not good because they do not say ‘WAIT!’ when a blind person pushes them, and knows not to go right when they push the button. The little buttons don’t have a red light, and are too old and not easy for blind people to find. I’ll feel happy if you fix this because it will be better for blind people,” wrote Kevin Mainard O’Connell, 5, via his mother Marie’s email account.

O’Connell isn’t blind, his mother explained, he just really loves the big sidewalk buttons and was recently learning about street-crossing safety.

At the request of directors, City Manager Bruce Moore responded to the child’s request.

The city has 335 traffic signals, about 60 percent of which have pedestrian signals with push buttons. As new traffic signals are installed, the audible crosswalk buttons are included.

When routine maintenance is needed on older-style buttons, they are typically updated to the larger buttons, but not to audible ones because the cost for those is about $10,000 for a typical intersection, Moore said.

“While it is not feasible to upgrade all pedestrian signals to have audible signals, the city has been proactive to upgrade intersections to include audible signals in areas of high pedestrian activity such as downtown, around [the University of Arkansas at Little Rock], and other areas that have higher expected pedestrian volumes,” he said.