please empty your brain below

I cycled down that way the other day - and while waiting at the early-release cycle lights (I'm not sure I'd have intuitively known how they work had it not been for your blog) watched a woman with a pushchair negotiate the edge of the roundabout.

I guess another reason for avoiding the lights is that very few other roundabout islands are accessible to pedestrians, so people don't expect this one to be.
Aside from central barriers, I think pavement barriers are a no no now because there is no escape route for cyclists/motorbikes if they are getting squashed by another vehicle.
The answer is simple: desire lines. People will cross where they want to go - the most direct line from A to B. If the safest crossing points are not those lines, then there's been an abject of failure of design (but then that was sadly obvious to everyone except the so-called professionals from the outset).
Hmm, tricky. What Iain says may be slightly over-simplified - there are pedestrian schemes in many places which work, and where pedestrians are successfully prevented or discouraged from taking a shorter but more dangerous route.

But not here.

Obviously better signage would help. And maybe the dangerous route could be made less attractive by something like double-height kerbs, perhaps on the central island. (Though that may just persuade the rash ones to take an even more dangerous route staying on tarmac).
Ah, they never learn, do they? It's the same with paths in parks and green spaces. As an example, in the 1980s, Shepherds Bush Green was 'redesigned' with lovely curvy paths between the various entrances/exits. Of course, people simply took the straight routes, making muddy track across the grass. In the end, the authorities faced reality and paved the muddy tracks.
TfL have always been very keen not to add pedestrian crossings on the two exit slip roads onto the A12, as this would significantly slow the traffic on a key London route.

Unfortunately the pedestrian desire lines cross these very slip roads... hence the creation of a solution which doesn't.
This sort of design has worked at the Elephant & Castle for years, including pedestrian barriers. It would only take a short stretch of barriers at the desired crossing point to deter pedestrians from crossing there as they wouldn't walk around them - would they?
Which way do you go DG?
Last year my daughter and one of her schoolfriends had to travel weekly from school in Stratford to Bow Arts which is just past the flyover. Being young fit people they would walk as far as just this side of the flyover and then get on a bus for one stop (as with all London youngsters bus travel is free for them) in order to get to Bow. They were just too daunted by the crossing arrangements (or lack of them) at the roundabout. Now at least I could show them the authorised way to cross and they could do that safely.
Many people will be going the old way through force of habit. Looking at the pictures, the answer may be to discourage people from crossing via the A12 slip roads by landscaping that invitingly flat and smooth area in the fourth picture. It could do with some greenery anyway.
Joan refers to showing her daughter the authorised way to cross.

I think that is the main lesson. The authorised way should be made so visually obvious that nobody has to have it "shown" to them. Judging by the pictures and DG's statistics, this has not been done successfully here.
@ RayL in the 1980s, Shepherds Bush Green was 'redesigned' with lovely curvy paths between the various entrances/exits. Of course, people simply took the straight routes,

In 1966, when the University of York campus at Heslington was being built, only a few paths were put down.

After a few months the routes that people chose to follow were made up as paths.

Unusual example of an architect being clever (and appropriately lazy).
Good scoop!
We've had a similar arrangement here on the Chiswick roundabout/flyover for some time and pedestrians seem to find it easy enough to use the rather more pleasant tree lined landscaped route across the central roundabout, even though we still have traffic lights restraining traffic turning onto the slip roads, which you don't have in Bow.

The route across our roundabout is also the recommended cycle route, and at a glance it might have been better to route cyclists over the roundabout at Bow rather than across the unprotected slip roads - but let's not go there!
In Redbridge many months ago our pelican crossings which used to operate promptly if not used recently were 'improved' and now always take an age to operate or self cancel. The result is that most people cross when the lights are against them and the crossing later stops all the traffic when there is no one left to cross.
This happened in the late 1990s on the other side of the Blackwall Tunnel - pedestrians were encouraged to walk directly across the roundabout at the Woolwich Road flyover in Greenwich, rather than around it.

Nobody did - and the whole idea was scrapped about six or seven years later. Seems TfL hasn't learned.
I've been watching these works progress over the months, but on the few occasions when I've walked between Stratford High Street and Bow Road, I completely forgot there were new crossings available. I wouldn't tempted to use them anyway. You don't need to wait long to cross the A12 slip roads, but I'm sure it takes much longer to cross the official way.

The traffic seems to be backing up more than usual around the roundabout. I wonder if this is because of the extra lights
All kinds of interesting psychology here.

I'd be interested to know if people are more likely to (a) cross the proper way when no-one else is around, because they are forced to think for themselves when there's no-one else to blindly follow (b) cross the dangerous way when no-one else is around, because they're less likely to feel guilty about it / they don't feel they're setting a bad example (c) how many people recognise the risk but make a judgement call based on the volume of traffic - c.f. when two or more people are waiting a long time at a pedestrian crossing/traffic lights with little/no traffic and you want to see who will "break" first.










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