Do The Crosswalk Buttons in St. Cloud Actually Work or Not?

In this world of complete impatience, and wanting things NOW, we, as a society, tend to do whatever we can to "hurry up" the process... of anything.

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So that brings me to crosswalks.  You are trying to cross a busy road, and you are actually doing the right thing and using that crosswalk instead of doing the "J-Walk".  But the light isn't changing as fast as you would like it to, so you start pushing the crosswalk button which you may believe will change the light faster than if you hadn't pushed it.

Do those buttons actually work or are they just there to "make you feel better"?

That answer is not exactly clear.  It seems that some of the buttons do something and the vast majority of them do not.

If you are in a city where there is a voice that you can hear when you press the button (Stillwater, MN has these) that is for visually impaired pedestrians.  The voice will generally tell you when it's safe to cross the street. A lot of cities do not have this function, but it doesn't necessarily mean that the button does nothing.

In another case, if you press the button, it doesn't change the light any faster to allow you to cross, but it may extend the time you have to get to the other side. There are also some buttons that actually do what you want it to do, and will alert the system that someone wants to cross the street.

And then there are also those buttons that do absolutely nothing.  Here's the other thing - you won't know if the button does anything or not.  Except for the ones that are obvious such as the buttons equiped with the voice letting you know when it's safe to cross.

Bottom line, go ahead and push the button if you want to.  Chances are it will do absolutely nothing, but there is that chance that it may