Lake Street at Hiawatha - Signal Timing

If you're riding a bicycle on Lake Street and pass the stop bar just as the light at Hiawatha changes to yellow you ought to be able to clear the intersection before cross traffic starts.  Sadly, that's not the case here.  This is a huge intersection of a type called a Single Point Urban Interchange.  Nobody likes them except traffic engineers.  Motorists hate them because they're confusing.  Bicyclists hate them because, at typical bicycle speed, one can get caught in cross traffic.  Walkers hate them because it takes so long to cross.

Here's an old video that outlines the timing problem for cyclists.

Lake at Hiawatha

So, what's the fix?  A longer clear phase.  Presently the timing allows for a 4 second yellow and a 4 second red clear phase.  That red clear phase needs to be long enough to permit someone moving at 10mph to clear, if not the whole intersection, then at least the portion of the intersection where they'll be exposed to crossing traffic.  According to the formula from the FHWA's Traffic Signal Timing Manual, the yellow+red clearance should be around 15 seconds for traffic proceeding at 10mph.

Here's the formula:

Given: t = 1; v = 10; a = 10; g = 0; W = 175; Lv = 7

gives a yellow + clear time of over 14 seconds.  Compare that to the actual yellow + clear time of 8 seconds for this intersection.