Nice so you don't have to floor it to make a yellow or Kickstart your air-cooled motorcycle when a long red turns green.
The timing is off by 3 seconds to stop people from going just before it turns green. So people go 4 seconds early.
In Montreal there was a community, a burrough, were they specifically had signs posted that said the lights are timed, if you speed you will make none of them. It was amazing to just coast along at exactly the speed limit, and face no challenges. Great for drivers and pedestrians and the community as a whole. There was so little road/vehicle noise in the area, no screeching about or road raging, it was just awesome.