Oxford Circus re-design

There is also the famous Balham Tube 'Shibuya' crossing. Does anyone else have any interesting pedestrian crossings they would like to post?

yes indeed i do... this particularly inconvenient tourist trap on abbey road is a bit of a mare always... they are like trafalgar pigeons... blindly walking into the street while lapping up 'the vibe'. wnankers!

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/c7/Abbey_Road_Zebra_crossing_2004-01.jpg

oh god... it`s big.

It's great that we're seeing this type of pedestrian priority measure in London. Granted, the junction in Acton isn't going to be the busiest, but why not stick it in if we can? It sends out a nice signal that the area is for walking. Ironically, it has taken much longer for this to become implemented in Oxford Circus, where the most dominant mode of transport, by far, especially in the peak hour, are people on foot. That they're treating such a high-pressure location is very welcome news indeed.

We've had two such staggered junction schemes in Hackney for a while now, at the junction of the A10 Kingsland High Street/A10 Stoke Newington Road/Crossway/Shacklewell Lane and at A104 Dalston Lane/A10 Kingsland Road/A10 Kingsland High Street/A104 Ball's Pond Road. As they're staggered junctions, they only cross diagonally in one direction, but they're good measures.

Flinders Street station in Melbourne has diagonal crossing..

the more famous one is in Tokyo

I've been there.. don't see how an intersection becomes 'famous'..

Because you've been there?

I do think the re-design is better....i think they should do the same at the Tottenham Court Road end too - thats way worse in my opinion.

Because you've been there?

Oh yeah.. how silly of me.

But I've been to Flinders St too.

What a conundrum.

I do think the re-design is better....i think they should do the same at the Tottenham Court Road end too - thats way worse in my opinion.

The year-round road works don't help.

On sat a police car on an emergency call flew into oxford circus junction during ped crossing; peds started running everywhere (away from and into the path of the police car), the police started trying to weave through streams of people at speed, had to slam on the anchors, tried to accelerate again before screeching to a halt as another few peds ran into it's path.It all struck me as amazingly dangerous. I wonder if this scenarios was thought about when the ped crossings were redesigned.

I take it this has been completed now. Not been down Oxford Street in a long time. Anyone seen it/got any thoughts on it?

ahh I see that it has been completed

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/london/8337341.stm

i hate it, especially at 8:30am when i'm getting to it en route to shepherd's bush. alot of weave.

remember loads of these in Oz, great step imo.
when they quiet riders can negotiate same time.
guess that’s not often this time of year here though....

On sat a police car on an emergency call flew into oxford circus junction during ped crossing; peds started running everywhere (away from and into the path of the police car), the police started trying to weave through streams of people at speed, had to slam on the anchors, tried to accelerate again before screeching to a halt as another few peds ran into it's path.It all struck me as amazingly dangerous. I wonder if this scenarios was thought about when the ped crossings were redesigned.

Yeah - that sounds like some dangerous driving by the police...

This is going to cause untold mayhem... you can already see on the bbc news article, people running across (narowly missing busses) because they started to cross after the red light.

what like normal then?

what like normal then?

Yes except they're in the stuck in the middle of the entire junction not just running across two lanes.

you'll see what i mean if you watch the video from aroun 40 secs: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/london/8337341.stm

^ In that video you can hear officials shouting - please stay on the pavement. They need the railings back!

That video is scary!

I am going to walk down and check it out now.

yes.theres always going to be a period where people are like wtf is this crossing?
then after enough people have got used to it then they settle down,
now as its London my friend you could argue that first time visitors wouldnt have seen them before, therefore more incidents, however they work in Oz etc etc so why not here.

Its great London leading the country in this, as my gig is promoting more equality between all road users, and out here in the sticks its a mission to even persuade engineers that peds should even get 10 seconds crossing as compared to 5 minutes road traffic(hypothetical figures).

so, if London can put one in then we can say to other remedial councils-- yes you can slow down traffic, look they do it in the middle of London.

I do like the whole philosophy of mixing pedestrians and cars though. It's not a good idea to practically have motorways running through the city where cars are completely oblivious to anything else than the road.