Near my house there are 2 ped crossings quiet close together and it just seems pointless and a waste of electricity they cause congestion at peak times due to the closeness of them both , can anyone think of a reason for why theres 2? Also can anyone think of any other examples of crossings close together.GSV Links below. on the second link if you turn the camera around you can see the other crossing

http://maps.google.co.uk/maps?q=hertfor ... 4,,0,15.89

http://maps.google.co.uk/maps?q=hertfor ... .54,,0,9.9

These two near me are always causing congestion. It's not helped by being constantly used by pedestrians so they seem to spend as much time on red as they do on green

Both nearsides too!! like the ones near me. Seems really pointless. One crossing is enough at both of our examples. And yeah the ones around here are always on red too.

These are two of ten crossings in a space of 1.5 miles on that road. Not a great one to drive along in mid-summer when lots of people are heading for the beach.

That wheelchair lane - what idiot dreamt that up?

Interestingly all the examples appear to have on-crossing detection, which should mean the pedestrian times are just enough and no more. That they are all 'always on red' suggests there is massive ped demand and replacing each of them with only a single crossing would have drivers facing a permanent red signal due to a constant stream of peds.

So the crossing are pointless, but always on red. I take this to mean "on red a large proportion of the time". This implies that the crossings are heavily used by pedestrians, which in turn implies that they're not pointless.

Unfortunately they don't seem to work like that. They stay on red long after the pedestrians have crossed. Maybe those in the industry can give a definitive answer as to whether there is a minimum time for the pedestrian phase so if the pedestrians cross quickly they will stay on red regardless. Either way, I prefer the older type with a flashing amber after the, relatively short, red.

This is the biggest issue with both Puffins and Toucans. Despite the claims for shorter red times when a pedestrian crosses quickly - they take substantially longer in most cases to release traffic than the flashing amber of a pelican.

Like nearside signals very much a case of nice theory but poor in practice.

Not both are pointless. just one of them. One in the middle would work better and do the same job. works well with the ped crossing outside liverpool street station and that has much more usage than the examples above. The one thats very close to the mini roundabout causes most tail backs. Surely one crossing would be better in the middle between the two. Then traffic wouldnt be getting caught between the two and causing tail backs.

Any advance on these two?

IIRC, they are actually on the same circuit, so if one goes red so does the other, effectively making them one rather long crossing. It's just a shame for vehicles caught in the middle!

Without knowing the area, it's difficult to know what would be best. My question though would be "better for who?"

Are one or both of the crossings on a 'desire line'? Would a consolidated crossing be on a 'desire line'? You could end up substituting two well-used crossings for one poorly-used crossing. Looking at the area on streetview, this would appear to be a local 'high street'. Remember that cars don't shop; people shop. Take away the ease to shop and you might be consigning these businesses to bankruptcy*.

*at least that's what every business will tell you if you're a transport planner trying to make any change whatsoever.

Assuming peds walk across the crossing and not diagonally off the crossing, which seems to always fox the on-crossing detection.

problem is that pedestrians will not walk very far out of their way to use a crossing - just see the numbers who cross on zig zags. So for a crossing to be any real use it needs to be installed on or near and existing desire line.

There really is no point in wasting council tax payers money on crossings that are never used so if there are two desire lines that means two crossings. And for some elements in the council no doubt the extra congestion will be seen as desirable.

That is so stereotypical of today's council planning.

I think these 3 take some beating (the 3rd crossing is just out of shot behind the Lorry and the bus but satellite view shows them up) 3 ped crossings within 250 yards to link a retail park with the high street and car parks, surely one crossing will suffice here or a footbridge as there is space. There used to be an underpass here but it was closed off and filled a couple of years back. These are the only reason why traffic backs up into Rochester most times of the day.

It's been gone for a while, but there used to be a sequence of two crossings and a junction all together, here - you can see the stop lines markings burned off the road. The other crossing was the same distance the other side of the junction, and they were all on the same controller - Going back 15 years now, came down here and they were "stuck" - three sets of red lights for the main road, green for the side roads and the peds. It was a nightmare trying to get through it..

A bit off topic but what's with all the closed down shops in the last post? It looks a lot like High Streets around here

That wheelchair lane - what idiot dreamt that up?[/quote]

I like that the wheelchair symbols don't even point the same direction (there's at least one left and one right!).

They point in the 'up' direction.

The ramp is fairly hidden coming from the left (on GMSV) and a u-turn from that direction, so the wheelchair lane is helpful.