Diagonal Crosswalks Solve Some Pedestrian Problems

To some, it’s an ingenious solution to the problem of getting people across the street without getting them hit by a car. To others, the crazy crosswalks that dot Beverly Hills and Old Town Pasadena signify a breakdown in social order, a kind of legitimized chaos.

At the very least, the diagonal crosswalks are funny-looking.

Instead of one set of pedestrians crossing on green lights and moving with the flow of traffic--while other pedestrians wait at red lights--those at diagonal crosswalks wait on all four corners until the cars are stopped in both directions. Then they cross any which way they like.

No need to jaywalk on these corners. The much quicker diagonal is perfectly acceptable--downright encouraged, even, by signs with words and arrows describing the procedure.

“It goes against everything mother told you,” said 27-year-old Jill Frankel, who lives in Beverly Hills. “But it looked like a quicker way to get to where I wanted to be--and legally, no less.”

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Beverly Hills installed 10 diagonal crosswalks (also known as scramble crosswalks) in its business district in late 1986, primarily in an effort to improve safety.

With the exception of crosswalks at two particularly busy intersections--where cars tend to back up--the program has been wonderfully successful, said the city’s associate transportation engineer, Bijan Vaziri. The two problem signals have been removed.

The system works because in traditional crosswalks--even when everyone is following the rules--pedestrians and cars come into conflict when cars make turns.

Diagonal crosswalks segregate the two groups. Traffic cycles in Beverly Hills are 60 seconds: 20 seconds for north-south traffic, 20 seconds for east-west traffic and 20 seconds for pedestrian traffic.

Accidents on streets with diagonals, Vaziri said, went down as much as 40%. That many shoppers and retailers like the system was a bonus, he said.

“It’s a statement that the roadways are not only for cars, they are for pedestrians also,” said Serop Der-Boghossian, a former traffic engineer for Beverly Hills and Pasadena and now a consultant for JHK and Associates in Pasadena.

“I get a kick out of the reaction when people realize you don’t have to go across twice, you can go across diagonally. The reaction is surprise and a smile on their faces.”

A friendlier pedestrian environment also means increased foot traffic passing by downtown businesses, said Chrissy Pearce, the manager at Crate & Barrel in Pasadena, which sits on a scramble-walk corner.

Put simply, Pearce said, “It makes it easier for customers to get across the street.”

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This is not the first time scramble walks have been used in the Los Angeles area.

In the 1940s, similar programs were tried, then canceled in the city of Los Angeles--as they were later on Long Island, in Las Vegas and other places. “It was a disaster,” said Brian Gallagher, a Los Angeles transportation engineer.

In New York, the odd-looking walks were dubbed the “Barnes Dance,” in honor of Henry Barnes, the New York City traffic commissioner from 1962-68 who tried to introduce the idea. New Yorkers soundly rejected it, though they were more accepting of one of Barnes’ other grand ideas: one-way traffic on the avenues.

Boston, in contrast, embraced the crossings and now has more than 600.

Traffic engineers say the system can only work in a particular type of intersection.

Diagonal crosswalks won’t work if auto traffic is too heavy, because then cars get backed up during the pedestrian crossing, requiring longer green lights for autos and more waiting time for pedestrians. Nor can the street be too wide, because the time allotted for pedestrians to cross would grow prohibitively long.

Drivers also have to be willing to wait during the downtime.

In Old Town Pasadena, two diagonal crosswalks along Colorado Boulevard have fared well because most of the drivers using that route are there to enjoy Old Town and look around, said Min-Der Day, the city’s principal traffic engineer. Residents looking to get around more quickly long ago switched to other thoroughfares such as Union and Green streets, Day said.

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Los Angeles residents should not expect to be scramble-walking any time soon.

A just-completed review of the system, including computer models and interviews with pedestrians and drivers, reaffirmed that it is not an appropriate traffic management plan for the city, Gallagher said.

The program works in Boston, he said, because the city’s narrow streets and crosswalks cannot accommodate its large number of pedestrians, so moving them along is a priority. Indeed, what makes Boston similar to the business districts of Beverly Hills and Pasadena is that they were not designed around the automobile, but with walkers--and, in historic Boston, with horses--in mind.

The opposite situation exists throughout most of Los Angeles, Gallagher said.

Most streets are too wide. Most traffic areas are too high-volume. And most drivers and pedestrians have indicated that they would not tolerate added delays, Gallagher said.

Although some subsections of the city might benefit from diagonal crosswalks, he added, the need for a uniform program outweighs any potential gains made by sporadic scramble walks.

Even supporters acknowledged that some people get confused, such as by crossing with the cars’ green light. There are also the skeptics, especially among newcomers and tourists.

“I thought it was odd the first time I saw it, but many things are odd in California,” said Marlo Goldstein, an attorney who moved to the Westside seven months ago from Washington, D. C. “So I ignored it and crossed horizontally because I had no faith in the drivers and thought I’d get hit.”