I thought I’d engage the power of STW to help me out on this one – I apologise for this being a bit long and rambling, but this is actually a really important road safety issue.

Between where we live and the local primary school my son has just started is a 4-way traffic light with a pedestrian crossing.
http://maps.google.co.uk/maps?q=powick&hl=en&ll=52.15765,-2.262722&spn=0.000882,0.002642&sll=53.800651,-4.064941&sspn=13.940309,43.286133&vpsrc=6&t=h&z=19&layer=c&cbll=52.15765,-2.262722&panoid=QGHjqHI6mtrM1iEB3N3V9g&cbp=12,96.45,,0,10.05
In case there’s any confusion, the main road travels E-W, and the light controlled crossings we’re using are N-S (the other crossings aren’t light controlled, hence not a problem). In that Streetview link you’re looking East.

To get to school on foot (or on bike – so far mini-aracer has got to school on some form of bike every day, 14 days and counting 🙂 ) we have to cross this pedestrian crossing. However the phasing for the pedestrian crossing is irritating (I usually use stronger words) – it’s a staggered crossing and often we end up stuck in the middle of the road for several minutes. The crossing I’d like to use (there’s a crossing on each side of the junction) it’s actually impossible to cross from one side of the road to the other in one go on the way to school. I can (and probably will) go into more detail about how and why the phasing doesn’t work, but for now it’s not that important.

Anyway I sent an e-mail to the council a while ago asking them to fix this, and have just had a reply. To say I wasn’t very impressed with the reply (which basically told me to get lost) is putting it mildly. First things first, what’s the legality about me copying and pasting the reply onto the forum? Is that a complete no-no?

Anyway, to pre-see, the response is as follows:
“We’ve made the pedestrian crossing phases so they work with the vehicle phases as we want to keep traffic moving in the junction and minimise delays to cars. The pedestrian crossing is just an add-on, we’re not going to even consider the idea of altering the vehicle phases to make life easier for pedestrians. If we made it so that pedestrians could cross the road without getting stuck in the middle, that could result in long delays, and drivers would get frustrated and jump the lights. Because of this and because it would cost us money to change anything it’s staying as it is.”
– in other words pedestrian safety is less important than driver convenience.

So what next? There’s something very specific I want them to do which will improve things for pedestrians but won’t impact at all on the more important car drivers, but beyond that what should I be saying about their unjustifiable reasons for keeping the status quo, and who should I contact to put political pressure on them. Local paper? ROSPA? If it was a cycling issue I’d contact the CTC, but ROSPA is the best I can come up with for pedestrian safety.

Please help – this is actually really important compared to a lot of the stuff discussed on here.

Is there some way i can give money instead of reading all that?

freedom of information act is your friend as is your local councillor, there will also be some guidlines somewhere about phasing that may or may not help you

Is there some way i can give money instead of reading all that?

I can give you a paypal account number if that’s of any help. All contributions will be put towards paying minimum wage to the researcher/modeller/lobbyist I’ve got working on this 😉

its something that irritates me too. on my way to work i have to cross a junction with a fltered left as well as a double carriageway. so can take several minutes to cross – basically two islands to hang about on. its obvious pedestrians and cyclists (it,s a shared crossing ) come last behind cars. I was in Antwerp a few months ago and noticed this didnt happen there – on a busy crossroads all the lights would turn red at once allowing pedestrians to cross in safety and convenience. but then again belgiums a civilised country for pedestrians and cyclists.

Aracer – I guess your going to have to start saving for a bridge.

How many pedestrians use that road compared to drivers? surely the council have to please the majority and not the minority, and more importantly keep traffic moving.

“Phoney” pedestrian phases at traffic signals are quite common – pressing the button doesn’t speed anything up for you if you are walking.

The worst thing is the bogus argument that is engaged – “if we cause queueing then cars will jump lights and that will cause a road safety issue”. Then if you say pedestrians won’t use it properly if they have to wait too long, the engineer will say they should obey the lights ….

There is a solution which is to have single-stage pedestrian crossing and install a red-light violation camera at the site – according to this there’s one of these cameras in Foregate Street Worcester for example. That will prevent the problem arising.

But going by the arrogant, dismissive response you received, I’d guess you will need to mount a campaign and have support from other people.

I can see why the council wouldn’t want to risk delaying the traffic at all there – you know how bad that road gets. But of course, bad phasing for peds or bikes* is a right pain in the arse.

Might need to get the Gazette/Worcester News involved perhaps. Especially if you work the arrogant reply angle that they can print.

* hyde park corner lights is a bugbear. If you’re crossing by bike from Constitution Hill to Hyde Park, you cant do it in 1 phase, cross, 1 phase, you have to wait for two phases at each crossing which takes a stupid lot of time. So its faster by miles to take the road route and get in the way of the cars instead. I have mentioned it to Boris once at the lights. Must chivvy him up about it….

The alternative is to make yourself up one of these and go and f*** with the traffic whenever you like 🙂

Just to play devils advocate here but perhaps after years and years in the job, the signal designers know what they’re doing. I’ve seen this a lot from the other side as I work closely with the signal design team in my current job (until Friday). I can’t speak for the team in your area but I know our guys spend a lot of time modelling the network. In fact, half of them are cyclists and still they get people who don’t realise the work that’s gone in to it, telling them they’re wrong and haven’t even considered cyclists. Actually, that happens a lot in traffic related roles. It seems Joe public has all the answers and the professionals know nothing.

The crossing may not work as well for you as you would like but there’s a good chance that how it does work gives maximum benefit to the network.

On a more helpful note, if there are lots of children going to school this way, have a word with the school. They might know if your authority has a safer routes to school officer. My advice would be to leave councillors out of it though. They generally don’t have any specialist knowledge or skills. You’re better off talking to people who know the job. When councillors get involved, we end up with crossings where they’re causing more problems than they solve.

freedom of information act is your friend as is your local councillor, there will also be some guidlines somewhere about phasing that may or may not help you

Ta for that – cc’ed in the local councillor to the first e-mail I sent (which is the only reason I’ve even got a reply). Have found http://webarchive.nationalarchives.gov.uk/+/http://www.dft.gov.uk/pgr/roads/tpm/ltnotes/thedesignofpedestriancrossin4034 which appears to have some policy stuff (a couple of things in there the current crossing doesn’t comply with – one extremely relevant to the case studies I my researcher has done).

I can see why the council wouldn’t want to risk delaying the traffic at all there – you know how bad that road gets

Yes, but as I will put in my reply, those lights aren’t the cause of any delays and increasing the red time for cars would make no difference whatsoever to throughput on the road. At busy times of day I have NEVER (yes I really do mean never, not once in over 10 years) gone through those lights and not caught up with traffic from the previous phase of the lights further down the road.

perhaps after years and years in the job, the signal designers know what they’re doing

You’d like to think so, but in this case they could actually improve things for the pedestrians without impacting at all on the vehicles, so it seems unlikely. Also as I mentioned in my reply to Stoner, these lights aren’t ever a limit on the throughput of the road network – that happens with the awful design a bit further down the road!

In any case is “maximum benefit to the network” really more important than the safety of small children walking to school (I have an update – mini-aracer went on the scooter this morning, so we only managed 14 days of bike in a row)?

Contact your local council and ask to speak to the Transport Planning Officer.

It may be that the phase isn’t as it’s intended and can be reset – or other changes can be made.

Then go to your local councillor.

in other words pedestrian safety is less important than driver convenience

I read it the other way arround?

Fundamentaly the system is safe (unless you jump the lights?), you just want the 1000’s of drivers to be inconvenienced so you can walk there quicker?

If it was 1000’s of walkers and 1 driver I’d say the opposite, but it’s a busy junction for cars, and presubably a quiet one for pedestrians.

For an example of signals that really didn’t work google Shinfield Road Reading, they put in some signals to improve safety (it was previously 2 mini roundabouts/free for all, it took weeks of ques going back to the M4 and the whole of Reading gridlocked before they admited that they’d got it wrong.

hierarchy of road design should put peds first i think.

You want the all the motorists to be inconvenienced just so you can walk to school two minutes quicker?

😕

This actually doesn’t sound at all important, even compared to a lot of the stuff discussed on here.

Doesn’t actually seem like a ‘road safety’ issue either.

. It seems Joe public has all the answers and the professionals know nothing.

Uhuh.

Aracer,

The roads department may have a legitimate argument for not changing the sequencing. However the response you got was pretty rude.

A friend of mine complained about a crossing which had very poor pedestrian visibility due to overgrown trees/bushes on council property. She got passed from pillar to post for 6 months being told it was a roads problem, it was a gardening dept problem, etc. I wrote one email copied to all three of the local councilors responsible for this ward which included the following phrases:

– “it is only a matter of time until a child is hit at this crossing”
– “the council has been alerted to the danger this crossing presents”
– “the council has been negligent in failing to address the danger”
– “a fatal accident could result in corporate homicide [replace with manslaugher for rest of UK] charges”

All wrapped up in some fluffy stuff about how proactive the had been on another matter a few months before, and I was sure I could rely on them to sort this out; along with some eco/health babble about encouraging children to walk not drive to school.

I sent that email at 10:30 pm on a Sunday night. By 3pm on Monday morning some of the bushes had been cut back. The councillors examined the crossing point themselves on Tuesday and had more of it removed on Wednesday.

Your councillors will act, if you find the right little switch… …assuming of course it is in the general interests of the population and not just 1 kid who has to leave for school a minute earlier.

This sort of thing really twists my nipples.

You want the all the motorists to be inconvenienced just so you can walk to school two minutes quicker?

it’s not just about 2 minutes, live any where near dual carriageways and you have to do a few of these crossings, 2 turns to 10, etc. This sort of thing is symptomatic of a system that puts car drivers way ahead of everyone else. Trying to remember where I read a good article about it, with most if not all crossings the average wait for a pedestrian is a lot longer than the average wait for a car.

Spot on, DONK.

I’m curious how tinas knows anything about the relative traffic densities at that junction. This morning there were more people stuck in the middle of the road because the phasing didn’t allow them to cross in one go than there were cars in the queue at the lights when that went green again after finally giving the pedestrians a phase (I’ll let you have a guess how many occupants in each car).

You want the all the motorists to be inconvenienced just so you can walk to school two minutes quicker?

Why all motorists? This would only affect those going through the junction at times of day the ped crossing is in use. Less drivers would be affected than the number of peds it would improve things for. Also the additional delay to drivers would be at most 20s, as opposed to the 2-3 minutes (or sometimes even more) the pedestrians are held up for. Of course in reality as I mentioned above the drivers wouldn’t be inconvenienced AT ALL, as it only means they get to the back of the next queue a little later – this junction isn’t a bottleneck in the road system.

Can you really not see how it is a road safety issue for lots of primary school age children to be stuck in the middle of the road for several minutes with high speed traffic passing by on both sides? The older children certainly ignore the red crossing lights.

I wish you luck aracer, that streach of road is a nightmare at peak times, Worcester County Council don’t have a good reputation do they when it comes to common sence?

http://www.worcesternews.co.uk/news/local/9236603.Council_slashes_bill_for_two_new_zebra_crossings/

http://www.worcesternews.co.uk/news/8422255.Mayor_blasts___4m_bus_lane/

The roads department may have a legitimate argument for not changing the sequencing. However the response you got was pretty rude.

Was it rude though? The way I read the OP, the bit in quotes is aracer’s creative interpretation of the response he got, clearly intended to cast the Council’s response in as unfavourable a light as possible.

I could be wrong though, maybe “pre-see” isn’t supposed to be “precis”.

I think you need to gather support for this – perhaps take a petition from pedestrian users at the junction, see if the school will back saferty concerns.

Perhaps take photos showing the junction in use with a lot of pedestrians stuck in the middle and few cars waiting, with date and time as evidence.

Then its a long process of writing letters to council / councillors, depending on response get press involved etc.

This method worked for us a couple of years ago. Our safety concerns were perhaps a bit more severe though – with 2 schools crossing a dual carriageway with 50mph limit. There used to be a school crossing patrol which was removed because it was deemed too dangerous for the wardens!!! The only alternative route was an extra mile walk, under an underpass, round a housing eatate, through a cutway round the back of an industrial estate and through another underpass.

After much lobbying, public demonstrations, TV and local rag coverage, we managed to get our councillor to visit, view the scene, and walk the alternative route. Lo and behold, a new crossing was installed shortly thereafter! Official line was that it had been in the pipeline, and the councilor had accelerated it because of safety concerns, and he was more than happy to take all the glory. But at least we got our crossing. Public pressure does give results.

When you do write a letter, can you tell them to sort out the Advanced Stop lines on the right turn lanes on the main road, as someone forgot to let cyclists legally use them 😉

Had exactly the same issue as you with a similar crossing where I live (Bath, Brougham Hayes for anyone who knows it). Worse though because not only long delays (which leads to peds crossing on red), the lights and route were confusing and there was physically not enough room on the ‘island’ between the crossings.

The Highways Team basically said the same as in this case until..

We did a Press Release and organised a photo op with local school kids (speak to the Head and Chair of Governors). We arranged for the junction to be looked at by an on-side traffic engineer who suggested how the phasing could be changed with minimal impact upon flows.

I got a call from the Head of the Highways asking for a site meeting and hey presto we eventually got changes made and the phasing changed.

Ask for the accident stats (Stats 19 forms) to see what that throws up too.

Might be worth getting in contact with Sustrans also – esp if it’s an important route to school

http://www.sustrans.org.uk/what-we-do/safe-routes-to-schools

I’m curious how tinas knows anything about the relative traffic densities at that junction

Streetview shows a lot of cars and no pedestrians, small sample size but it’s all there was to go on.

surely the council have to please the majority and not the minority, and more importantly keep traffic moving.

crapspackle. if pedestrians are the minority then the inconvenience of changed phasing will only happen infrequently, i.e when someone wants to cross.

Streetview shows a lot of cars and no pedestrians, small sample size but it’s all there was to go on.

😆 – I was going to have a go at you, but I genuinely am laughing – doing traffic surveys from Streetview is definitely a cunning plan!

Thanks to all – some really useful stuff there – I knew I could rely on STW. I know it’s actually a pretty minor situation compared to others, but it’s my kids (and their friends) who it impacts, so to me it’s important. I have a reply back from the headmaster of the school and will hopefully meet up with him next week.

orena45 – are you really local, or just commenting based on Streetview? My understanding is that there’s no problem with the cyclists using them, but cars are also allowed into the Westbound one. There are all sorts of things wrong with how that junction works (it worked far better with temporary lights which didn’t try to be so clever when there was roadworks on) – but figured I should only fight one front at a time. Was very tempted to suggest they also sorted out the car phasing in my initial e-mail – maybe I should bring that in as it seems they might be more bothered.

Wish you luck with it. I’d be a bit more radical, I’d remove the traffic lights and replace them with a roundabout (there appears to be plenty of space for it) which would let the traffic flow better. Then I would move the 2 crossings about 50-100m further down the road either side of the roundabout and you would only have to cross 2 lanes of traffic rather than 3. We have similar junctions in the Nederlands where they do that, or quite often the pedestrian crossing is right on the roundabout on the approach/exit lanes, so traffic has to stop on the roundabout to let you cross, took some getting used too when I moved over here.

p.s. Ain’t Streetview ace, now know where I can buy a Skoda and have a 2-pub pub crawl now if I’m ever in that part of the world 🙂

Was it rude though? The way I read the OP, the bit in quotes is aracer’s creative interpretation of the response he got, clearly intended to cast the Council’s response in as unfavourable a light as possible.

I could be wrong though, maybe “pre-see” isn’t supposed to be “precis”.
Ah Johnners you may be right. I wasn’t awake enough to decipher pre-see and assumed it was a “sneeky look” at the content of the letter. It might be the only precis I’ve ever seen that then had another precis at the end “In other words…”

So are you saying that you get stuck on the big barriered island around 2/3 of the way across that road? The one that’s specifically put there to allow you to stand there safely.

How many pedestrians use that road compared to drivers? surely the council have to please the majority and not the minority, and more importantly keep traffic moving.

Self for-filling prophesy, build everything to be inconvenient dangerous and unpleasant for pedestrians and cyclist and guess what, there aren’t many pedestrians and cyclists!

No not local, just being pedantic – the right turn ASL’s should have a dashed line to allow cyclists to enter the box, otherwise they’re crossing a stop line which is obviously illegal when there’s a red light 😉

Ah – strictly speaking it is totally legal to enter that box via the diagonal striped bit though, as it is bordered by a broken white line, and quite clearly it is necessary to do so!

Fair enough – from the Streetview it looked like there wasn’t a broken diagonal line for the offside ASLs 🙂

Just in case anybody is interested, I’ve seen the headmaster at the school, he’s contacted the sustainable transport bloke on the council and I have both the local councillors in the loop. The county councillor has arranged a site visit. Has taken surprisingly little effort to get things in motion – hopefully it will all get somewhere!

Thanks for all the helpful suggestions – have also contacted Rospa and got advice and may also try Sustrans.

In fact, half of them are cyclists and still they get people who don’t realise the work that’s gone in to it, telling them they’re wrong and haven’t even considered cyclists. Actually, that happens a lot in traffic related roles. It seems Joe public has all the answers and the professionals know nothing.

While I’d like to think this is the case, the cycling infrastraucture that actually exists on the ground makes it hard to believe that it’s anything more than a box-ticking afterthought 99% of the time.

While I’d like to think this is the case, the cycling infrastraucture that actually exists on the ground makes it hard to believe that it’s anything more than a box-ticking afterthought 99% of the time.

Depends where you are – not so bad round here all things considered, and maybe even better at Onzadog’s. Interesting to note that the sustainable transport bloke here is somebody I know through the local cycling club!