Pedestrian crossing at Old Road/Gipsy Lane junction – change requested

Roz and Ruth have requested that a high level repeater can be put in at the pedestrian crossing in the centre waiting section in Old Road. Here is the email we sent to the Access to Headington team for discussion. The County Council officers are currently considering this request.

Residents have drawn councillors’ attention to the fact that groups of schoolchildren cross here when they get off the bus on the southern side of Old Road to reach Cheney School. This means groups of (anecdotally up to 30) students try to use the puffin crossing at the same time.
This also means that when there is a crowd of children immediately next to the red/green man box, and because there is no audible signal it’s not easy for them to see when the green man sign comes on because they are all squashed together.
Please would it be possible to find some money in the A2H budget to put in a repeater at a higher level so that everyone can see it? Roz and I think this would be a great safety improvement so near a school if this is feasible and affordable.

Windmill School pedestrian crossing latest

The installation of the new zebra crossing in Margaret Road has suffered many setbacks, however it seems that it may be operational starting in the middle of next week. Our latest information is this:

There has been a lot of conversation with SSE about the installation of the zebra crossing poles and beacons.

They have now been installed and weather permitting the lining crew will be on site today to install the line.

Once this has been done we will let the SSE know and they will put in the fuses and commission the lights.

Hopefully it will be all completed by Monday / Tuesday of next week.

Pedestrian crossings – the invitation to begin crossing

Image: Green man traffic signals.RCN-D13^23291573.JPG

At yesterday’s packed Ward Focus meeting, residents asked us to invite a County Officer along to talk about phasing of crossing lights.

We get asked a lot about pedestrian crossings. Those who are less mobile have concerns that they may not make it to the other side of the road in time before the traffic starts moving again.

Here is our latest information from the County Council re the crossing outside Douglas Veale House.

We still have this common misunderstanding. The Green Man period is the “invitation to begin crossing”. Its purpose is to make sure all waiting pedestrians are able to set off. The following period is much longer and is the time allowed for pedestrians to complete crossing.

 Here we have 5 seconds Green Man and when it goes out there are a further 13 seconds before the traffic is shown a green light (be careful if you measure this as the crossing has detection and the traffic can be released a few second earlier if all pedestrians have cleared the crossing).

You may like to view this article from the Daily Telegraph about the issue.