4 ms·

Our small town implemented scramble crossings in the city a couple of years ago. People didn't ask for them, the council installed them as a seemingly progress

Our small town implemented scramble crossings in the city a couple of years ago. People didn't ask for them, the council installed them as a seemingly progressive move. Overall though, the response has been fairly negative. People just felt uncomfortable adopting the system and walking diagonally across an intersection. Drivers in the city are extra frustrated at the longer wait times at the lights now. There have been loud calls to scrap the entire thing and go back to the older system. Not sure if it is the same in other cities, but the old way would let turning cars through at the same time as pedestrians, but pedestrians always had right of way, and it was up to the turning car to wait for pedestrians to clear before completing the turn. Gave some 'see and avoidance' responsibility to the driver. With scramble crossings, all that judgement is taken away and everyone has to stop and wait for the lights to tell them what to do.

crooked-v 9y ago
It sounds like your town may just not have enough pedestrians for there to be a visible benefit from the change. Scramble crossings only have the most effect where at peak hours there WILL be people pushing the crosswalk button in both directions every time as soon as the previous batch stops, so that having crossings for both directions combined means less overall interruptions for drivers and less double-crossings for pedestrians.
- cyberferret 9y ago
  I think that is a big factor. Our town population is only about 100,000 people. At these crossings, I am often waiting for only 4 or 5 people to amble across the intersection. I can see that in a huge city, it is an efficient way to get people across city blocks, but here we are simply too small for it to make a difference.
vacri 9y ago
> pedestrians always had right of way, and it was up to the turning car to wait for pedestrians to clear before completing the turn. Gave some 'see and avoidance' responsibility to the driver. While this kind of crossing doesn't seem to make sense for a small town, my own experience of crossing the road with a valid crosslight in the US shows me just how much contempt there is for pedestrians there. In a three-month visit, there was twice I was crossing the road with valid lights and had to stop walking or I'd literally walk into the side of a car cutting me off while turning. There were a fair few lesser experiences, but those two were pretty clear-cut examples of pedestrian contempt.
bobbytherobot 9y ago
In many parts of DC, intersections are no-turn-on-red. When I've driven around DC, unless I'm driving in the middle of the night, I prefer the no-turn-on-red because traffic is frequent with terrible sight lines.
thanksgiving 9y ago
Maybe drivers in your town are disciplined but drivers here can't adhere to a simple zipper merge. I don't trust drivers turning right to yield to pedestrians. Many do but enough don't that I won't start walking until I can tell for sure. This slows down traffic.
- alistairSH 9y ago
  In my experience, drivers turning right on red (and across my active cross-walk) are frequently looking left for on-coming vehicular traffic (at the expense of being completely oblivious to the cross-walk). Part of me wishes we'd just ban right-on-red outright in the US.
  - thanksgiving 9y ago
    And there I was on the other edge feeling bad for slowing down traffic by putting my own safety first.
bluejekyll 9y ago
You do feel exposed when walking through an intersection. Usually you only look left or right for cars that are trying to hit you. In an intersection, you've got to look behind you. You need to do this when crossing and there is the potential for a right-turn car to come and get you too. So I can understand people being unfamiliar with it, or in a light pedestrian area, being uncomfortable with it.

crooked-v 9y ago

It sounds like your town may just not have enough pedestrians for there to be a visible benefit from the change. Scramble crossings only have the most effect where at peak hours there WILL be people pushing the crosswalk button in both directions every time as soon as the previous batch stops, so that having crossings for both directions combined means less overall interruptions for drivers and less double-crossings for pedestrians.

cyberferret 9y ago
I think that is a big factor. Our town population is only about 100,000 people. At these crossings, I am often waiting for only 4 or 5 people to amble across the intersection. I can see that in a huge city, it is an efficient way to get people across city blocks, but here we are simply too small for it to make a difference.

vacri 9y ago

> pedestrians always had right of way, and it was up to the turning car to wait for pedestrians to clear before completing the turn. Gave some 'see and avoidance' responsibility to the driver. While this kind of crossing doesn't seem to make sense for a small town, my own experience of crossing the road with a valid crosslight in the US shows me just how much contempt there is for pedestrians there. In a three-month visit, there was twice I was crossing the road with valid lights and had to stop walking or I'd literally walk into the side of a car cutting me off while turning. There were a fair few lesser experiences, but those two were pretty clear-cut examples of pedestrian contempt.

bobbytherobot 9y ago

In many parts of DC, intersections are no-turn-on-red. When I've driven around DC, unless I'm driving in the middle of the night, I prefer the no-turn-on-red because traffic is frequent with terrible sight lines.

thanksgiving 9y ago

Maybe drivers in your town are disciplined but drivers here can't adhere to a simple zipper merge. I don't trust drivers turning right to yield to pedestrians. Many do but enough don't that I won't start walking until I can tell for sure. This slows down traffic.

alistairSH 9y ago
In my experience, drivers turning right on red (and across my active cross-walk) are frequently looking left for on-coming vehicular traffic (at the expense of being completely oblivious to the cross-walk). Part of me wishes we'd just ban right-on-red outright in the US.
- thanksgiving 9y ago
  And there I was on the other edge feeling bad for slowing down traffic by putting my own safety first.

bluejekyll 9y ago

You do feel exposed when walking through an intersection. Usually you only look left or right for cars that are trying to hit you. In an intersection, you've got to look behind you. You need to do this when crossing and there is the potential for a right-turn car to come and get you too. So I can understand people being unfamiliar with it, or in a light pedestrian area, being uncomfortable with it.