Summarize this content to 2000 words in 6 paragraphs Traffic engineer Tym Pieglowski was frustrated at how long the commute to his children’s school took each morning, so he and his two sons ditched the car and took up cycling.But – at one of the 17 times the trio had to stop at road intersections and traffic lights – his youngest son asked a simple question: “Why can the cars go along next to us, but we have to be stopped?”Tym Pieglowski with his sons, Zachary, 6, and Kai, 3, is trying to get the pedestrian walk times increased at traffic lights like this one near his home in Maroubra.Credit: Janie BarrettThe question was what the 19-year traffic engineering veteran described as the moment when the penny dropped.“The solution is simple,” Pieglowski said of an idea he is championing at next week’s Sydney Summit, inspired by his son’s question: change traffic rules so anyone travelling along the main road – either walking, cycling or driving – has the right of way, and anyone wanting to intercept is forced to give way. It’s what he describes as “an imaginary zebra crossing on every road and intersection”.The change would mean pedestrians walking in the same direction of traffic as the roads would, when approaching an intersection, have a green pedestrian light for as long as drivers get a green light.Pieglowski said anything done to improve the way pedestrians interact with traffic lights would lead to “healthier and happier Sydneysiders” who are able to walk around their areas with fewer interruptions. But the changes require a radical rethink of how we interact with our roads.
