I picked this up off the ITE E-Newsletter Vancouver Sees Future in 'Scramble' Intersections, Toronto Sees Congestion
http://news.nationalpost.com/2011/12/20/vancouver-sees-future-in-scramble-intersections-toronto-sees-congestion/
Reassessing the Pedestrian Scramble
http://news.nationalpost.com/2011/09/09/chris-selley-reassessing-the-pedestrian-scramble/
News Articles: National Post
Two news articles describe ongoing efforts to institute "pedestrian scramble" intersections (often known as Barnes Dances) in Canada and the US at the same time existing "pedestrian scramble" applications are being removed. The effects on pedestrian-vehicle conflicts and on pedestrian and vehicle throughput are presented.
The Vancouver article mentioned one reason to install these is conflict with turning vehicles. Another possibility is to prohibit right-on-red and potentially left turns as well. I don't know what the effect would be, but RonR is commonly disallowed in Europe so theoretically it can be done w/o catastrophe. :-)
ReplyDeleteScrambles are also common in Britain although I don't think they are always timed for diagonal crossing, just that all vehicle traffic is stopped for peds. I'm always surprised when they are not mentioned in articles.
We don't do a very good job of sharing ideas with our colleagues in the UK.
ReplyDeleteCertainly, there are tradeoffs with scrambles and it will always be a tool that if applied widely could be effective. The tradeoffs are higher delay for transit or bicycle and car traffic.
I think Denver is struggled with their scrambles because of this.