A new Zebra Crossing has been installed at the top of Spring Road to help the morning migration of students going to Larkmead School, along Faringdon Road, and returnng home later in the day.
Recently installed crossings on busier roads in Abingdon have been of the Pelican or Toucan variety, with traffic lights. The Zebra Crossing pre-dates such bird named crossings. The Belisha beacons either side are named after Leslie Hore-Belisha, the Minister of Transport, who introduced them in 1934 – according to Wikipedia.
Zebra crossings are the cheapest to install since they have no advanced electronics.
Pelican crossings were the first to have PEdestrian
LIght Control; there is a flashing amber light for motorists and a flashing green man for pedestrians warning that the pedestrian phase is coming to an end.
Puffins are more sophisticated Pedestrian User Friendly lights have a normal traffic light sequence for the motorists and cameras looking across the crossing to record pedestrian usage rather than a single-timed phase.
Toucans allow cyclists to cycle across as well as pedestrians (Two Can go).
Pegasus crossings provide safe passage for riders on horses.
What do you mean – get a life?!
Only thing missing from the picture is a Big ‘metal’ Lollipop!!!!!
(Yes I am old enough to remember them from childhood).
I came that way the other day. The only criticism I have is that it is quite close to the roundabout and obstructed by the corner so no time to observe it properly
I use this road everyday at school time and pleased that it is not operated by lights as every child would have pushed the operation button as it walked past…its what kids do.
and I bet the kids will still run across the road 20 metres away to save a walk.
Good addition to a road where people tend to drive too fast, especially given large number of school children walking there every day
Yes I agree with Janet – far too close to the roundabout – there’ll be an accident there for sure! I’ve also driven round that corner from Faringdon Road turning left into Spring Road a few times recently, looking right to make sure traffic and children on bikes aren’t coming onto me and hey ho! suddenly there’s someone crossing right in front of me!!
Mmmm
The beacons are visible which should alert us to the presence of the crossing. Always assume there’s someone on it, and there should be no problems.
That said, Oxford CC’s traffic engineers do seem to like to put pedestrian crossings very close to roundabouts. They have another special at the bottom of Spring Road on the double mini-roundabout.
Keep us on our toes!
Wow – that is close to the junction, and blind to traffic turning left into Spring Road. The oxonian is spot on.
A number of nearby residents have raise concerns about the visibility issues with this crossing which I have discussed with county council officers. I also had the same concerns when I first saw it.
They say that the sight lines were all checked carefully before the crossing was installed and that their monitoring so far suggests that traffic is slowing as it approaches and they’ve had no reports of any actual problems so far.
I’ve asked them to continue to keep an eye.
The crossing is near to the junction because that is where the ‘desire line’ of pedestrians is. If you don’t put crossings as near to pedestrian desire lines a s possible they simply won’t use the crossing and will cross the road more dangerously instead.