• Here's a fatal crash at the very wide Deptford Broadway junction. A young woman was killed while crossing the street on foot.

    https://www.standard.co.uk/news/london/coroner-urges-review-of-confusing-pedestrian-crossing-after-student-killed-by-bus-a4164216.html

    She would have crossed here:

    https://www.google.co.uk/maps/@51.4748565,-0.024206,3a,47.5y,201.48h,82.68t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1sp0hriyNdLfg6_3_i-Elr4g!2e0!7i16384!8i8192

    As you can see if you follow the link, there is one pedestrian traffic signal for this crossing of the three eastbound lanes (the left-turning lane is not signalised). However, there is a split-phase arrangement in which right-turning traffic (into Brookmill Road) can turn when the lights are at red for straight-ahead eastbound traffic. This means that the pedestrian traffic lights can only be at green when all three lanes, both for straight-ahead movement and the right turn, are at red.

    Split-phase arrangements can be hazardous in a number of ways, and here it is likely that pedestrians often cross the two straight-ahead lanes when they're stopped at red but the right-turn lane has a green light. While the pedestrian traffic light would have been at red for Julia Luxmoore Peto, she may not have realised that the right-turning lane had a green light. I would personally find it unlikely that she was looking at the pedestrian traffic light governing the section of pedestrian crossing across the westbound lanes, but I don't think it matters whether she was or not. It's definitely confusing that there are different arrangements for the two movements, whether she thought she had a green light or not.

    As ever, these arrangements are made to increase through motor traffic capacity. Splitting the two phases enables TfL to make the right-turning phase significantly shorter than the much more dominant straight-ahead phase (and the arrangement is mirrored on the westbound side of the junction), and by rights they should then also install separate pedestrian phases for each, but that would probably just about wipe out the motor traffic capacity gains from the split-phase arrangement, so they went with one phase for pedestrians. This really is something that should have been brought out at the Safety Audit stage at the latest and amended, but probably wasn't done because it would have poleaxed the whole idea for the junction arrangement. It was only redone a few years ago:

    https://consultations.tfl.gov.uk/roads/a2-deptford-broadway-deptford-bridge-junction/

    I can't remember what the exact arrangement was before, but it has, of course, long been a hazardous junction. While I imagine the recent works may have improved some things there, this seems like a deep-seated design flaw. Unfortunately, addressing it might well involve remodelling the whole junction. Fitting 'louvres' to one of the traffic lights isn't going to help much. FIngers crossed that the pattern of this crash won't be repeated.

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