Hackney pedestrian barriers
Hackney, the London borough where I currently live, has removed some pedestrian barriers. Maybe they’ll remove even more; I don’t know. This is good news.
In case you don’t understand why this is good news, I’ve taken some pictures to demonstrate a typical effect of these barriers at a junction here in London.
The pictures are taken at the corner of Lower Clapton Road and Urswick Road in Hackney, London. Lower Clapton Road makes a 90 degree bend North, Urswick Road comes in from the South:
The southmost placemark in this map (the one on the West side of Urswick Road) is where I took the first picture, looking North:
The barrier creates a restricted atmosphere. It effectively takes away about 40 cm of the width of the pavement. It prevents you from crossing Urswick road anywhere on that last stretch of road, until you get to the traffic light. It can also be dangerous to cyclists: If a cyclist gets caught between a large vehicle and the barrier, for example because the motorized vehicle passed to close or cuts up the cyclist by passing, then suddenly pulling left for a left turn, there is no escape route and the cyclist can effectively get crushed between the vehicle and the barrier.
Now, we keep walking North and get to Lower Clapton Road, where it makes a bend North. We want to cross the West-East arm of Lower Clapton Road. This is what we see:
To get across, we have to first turn a bit left. (The next picture is taken form the same spot as the one above, just looking more to the left.)
We have to walk along the barrier along Lower Clapton Road to get to the opening. You can see the staggered design of the pedestrian railings on the traffic island in the middle of the road.
The staggered design effectively slows you down a lot, especially if there are pedestrians coming from both sides at the same time, and meeting head on on the now very narrow path between the railings on the traffic island. In fact, at many traffic lights, traffic islands like this make it effectively impossible for pedestrians to cross one single road in their allotted green light phase.
Just as I was about to cross from the traffic island to the other side of the street, I got “lucky” for my photoshoot, being able to snap a relatively frequent additional problem:
The yellow car had not stopped in time for the red light. Traffic here is often slow, not to say crawling, and it’s hard to blame drivers for sometimes failing to keep the junction entirely clear. However, it’s obvious that the barrier makes the situation much worse than it would need to be. In their tiny allotted green-light phase, the peds have to slalom not only around the barriers, but around the hood of the car. A wheelchair user or someone pushing a child in a pushchair wouldn’t be able to cross.
The official reason why the barriers are there is “pedestrian safety.” However, in fact they result in drivers going faster, since pedestrians are presumably removed from danger anyway. Nobody to suddenly step out into the street, no shopping bags dangling over the kerb. Drivers are still going faster, though, in the areas around such junctions where there are no barriers, so pedestrian safety is effectively decreased, to say nothing of pedestrian convenience.
Pedestrians, tired of the obstacle course, in fact end up sometimes walking outside of barriers or crossing at “unofficial” points. For example, when I need to cross Lower Clapton Road, I sometimes decide to bypass the traffic island altogether. Instead of entering it, I pass it on its Eastern side, and then take one long straight path to the opening in the barriers that’s just in front of the blue pharmacy in the second picture. This comes at a certain risk: Once I’m past the traffic island, I can’t see the pedestrian traffic light anymore, and obviously getting to the opening in front of the pharmacy takes much longer than the official way across. And because of the barriers, most cars don’t expect me to be there at all.
Addendum
I’ve since learned that these things are actually called “pedestrian railings” or “pedestrian guard railings”. Of course this makes sense, given the limited view of pedestrians’ paths that those who put them in must have held: along the road guarded by railings, and only across at certain official crossing points, never mind the detour. If you’d like to get across directly, they act as, well, barriers.
