Reclaiming the urban road space for pedestrians with scramble crossings
April 15th, 2009 by Nat JMIf you’ve been to London’s Oxford Circus, you probably remember literally queuing to get past people or in and out of the tube station, waiting for ages to cross the junction and generally wanting to be the hell out of it because it is so busy.
The City of Westminster has finally decided to do something about it and they are going to install a pedestrian scramble crossing, as seen in New York City’s Union Square and Tokyo’s Shibuya.
Normally, most crossings allow for some vehicle movements while pedestrians cross on one arm. Typically, if you want to cross diagonally, you will have to do it in 2 gos, and if you are unlucky, you might have to wait 30 seconds each time. Furthermore, at busy crossings, vehicles ignore the central yellow box markings (which you shouldn’t enter if you cannot leave) and block the crossings, forcing pedestrians to zigzag between vehicles.
While traditional crossings are perhaps acceptable for a through road used by several vehicles in transit which have no other option, they should have no place in a city centre as they relegate pedestrians to a minor role. Pedestrians are the driving force of town centres as with no pedestrians, there would be nobody to buy things in your shops, so it’s time for us to reclaim our urban roads!
On a last note, I’m wondering where the plans to pedestrianise the whole of Oxford Street have gone. It seems that since my fellow Londoners have elected Boris, all those pro-pedestrians plans have disappeared off the radar?
Tags: Boris Johnson, london, New York City, Oxford Circus, pedestrians, political, roads, Tokyo, transport, urban
