please empty your brain below
This content is recently why I come to this blog. Preston, where I'm from, has recently had countdown crossings installed. Never before seen up here. They're all around 13-15 seconds and now I know why!

Liam | 05.04.24 - 7:07 a.m. | #

Do you mean Wellington Arch and Constitution Hill?

dg writes: I did. Fixed thanks.

Jim | 05.04.24 - 7:11 a.m. | #

Classic DG 🤩 the best.

Here | 05.04.24 - 7:58 a.m. | #

I'm surprised they went with the additional cost of displaying 20 seconds. Usually that sort of thing would be fudged by keeping 19 seconds for 2 seconds, then counting down.

dg writes: There is no extra cost. All countdown units display two digits.

Simon | Homepage | 05.04.24 - 8:01 a.m. | #

Taipei in Taiwan is a wonderful city but pedestrians are cursed by some of the highest wait times for crossings I’ve ever encountered. On the flip side, this means they also get some very high countdowns. The highest I spotted was more than a minute!

Dan | 05.04.24 - 8:02 a.m. | #

II’m pretty sure the diagonal crossing just down the road from me outside Balham Station (the first diagonal crossing in the UK), makes the leaderboard and might even be the winner. I will check and confirm shortly

Graham T | 05.04.24 - 8:06 a.m. | #

I worked on the Old Street when I was at TfL - it’s taken so long to get to here.

Didn’t expect to see an article about Dft signs manual this morning!

David | 05.04.24 - 8:28 a.m. | #

In these conversations, I tend to confuse the countdown for completing the pedestrian walking phase with the countdown for completing the pedestrians-must-wait phase. I think they are distinguished by colour of digits, but there may be some variation here.

dg writes: In the UK there is no countdown for the waiting phase.

Malcolm of Kent | 05.04.24 - 8:58 a.m. | #

Hanoi and other cities in Vietnam have countdowns road traffic. The countdown changes between green and red figures as well, then the mini grand prix starts.
Traffic approaching a green light has green figures the change to red to warn that a red light is coming.

Mike | 05.04.24 - 9:00 a.m. | #

Following on from my earlier post, the Balham diagonal crossing is a mere 17 seconds so sneaks joint third place as things stand.

dg writes: added, thanks.

Graham T | 05.04.24 - 9:04 a.m. | #

As per previous comments, I don't why they implemented countdown in such an odd and limited way. Why not count down the red phase and the green phase for everybody? It makes it so much less frustrating for any user as you know exactly how long you will be stood/sat there.

Herned | 05.04.24 - 9:11 a.m. | #

I think Victoria St and Artillery Row diagonal is 20 seconds

Jon | 05.04.24 - 9:15 a.m. | #

When I crossed the junction of Lambeth Road/Kennington Road recently, I'm pretty sure the countdown began at 20 (despite it only being a 2 lane crossing)

Bill | 05.04.24 - 9:15 a.m. | #

If metrication was properly implemented in this country we wouldn't have absurd situations like the one in Table 18-4 where vehicle speeds are measured in miles per hour and pedestrian speeds are measured in metres per second. But we will all have gone to our graves before that happens.

Jonathan Wadman | 05.04.24 - 9:17 a.m. | #

I'm not familiar with the Old Street junction layout, but my immediate reaction was 'Golly, those bus stops are a long way from the station entrance/exit'.

Petras409 | 05.04.24 - 9:31 a.m. | #

In Havana we noticed that the big city centre pedestrian crossings had the much simpler system that others have mentioned. What would be our green 'invitation to cross' followed by our numbered countdown were combined into one numbered countdown of green digits. That then switched directly to another numbered countdown of red digits to tell people how long they had to wait. This knowledge seemed to make everyone more patient than here, where we've idea how long all the other options are going to take.

ActonMan | 05.04.24 - 9:39 a.m. | #

The junction of White Post Lane, Carpenter's Road and Bassett Lane in the Olympic Park has a pedestrian timer that starts at 18, so top 3 on your list. Pretty pointless when there's not an event on - the road isn't unusually wide or anything

Isaac | 05.04.24 - 10:08 a.m. | #

I don't like to cavil over an excellent article, but ...
As you demonstrate at the Mall, the total crossing time of D/green + E/countdown is the more significant figure for pedestrians and traffic.

I sense a crowd-sourced effort by DG readers (armed with with sturdy stop-watches and clipboards) could create a fascinating - and, dare I say it, monetisable - database of London's countdown crossing times.

martin'O'Holcombe | 05.04.24 - 10:26 a.m. | #

I'm glad you kicked this off during the school holidays.

Digger50 | 05.04.24 - 11:15 a.m. | #

I’m frustrated with the new countdown timers at Cheam Broadway which start at 12. If this is not an error then they must be set to allow for impromptu diagonal crossings, or perhaps they think that the population is so elderly here we need the extra time!

General moan: For a new set of traffic lights, the cycles are far too rigid, even taking into account Scoot, and/or suppressing the left/right filter at times. To TfL, the whole cycle could be much shorter outside of the working day to reflect the greatly reduced traffic flows.

Ken | 05.04.24 - 11:36 a.m. | #

+1 for Jon - I can confirm the x crossing at Victoria Street / Artillery Row / Buckingham Gate is a 20.

Marc | 05.04.24 - 12:40 p.m. | #

+1 to Marc and Jon, it is and does feel absurdly high when in a bus stuck at a light. Worth noting how it will be the longest (untied) when the Oxford Circus diagonals are removed in the next few years!

Interesting how contrary to several other un-gyratorisation projects the subways have been retained at Old Street.

matthieu1221 | 05.04.24 - 12:57 p.m. | #

When these were first introduced in the UK they were not integrated with the traffic signal controls. As I recall they were only connected to a single traffic light's red and green lamps and did a learning cycle, measuring the length of the reds and greens, and from that they calculated when to start the countdown. Your 16 and 20 pictures - with a single row of LEDs in the numbers - are from that era, though they are maybe connected more intelligently to the controls by now. You can see a line of 4 unlit LEDs above the numbers which were used to indicate the status of the unit.

Peter | 05.04.24 - 1:25 p.m. | #

I've made three site visits and can confirm that Victoria Street is indeed a lengthy 20, White Post Lane in the Olympic Park is an utterly unnecessary 18 and Lambeth Road/Kennington Road is 'only' 17, not 20.

All added, thanks.

(and it does suggest there are rather more of these out there)

diamond geezer | Homepage | 05.04.24 - 2:26 p.m. | #

I will go to observe the lights at the diagonal crossing outside Wood Green tube station, but because the distance on the map is about 16.5m would expect it to be 16 or 17.

Bob L-S | 05.04.24 - 2:31 p.m. | #

Another great and fascinating post - thank you. I was born a few hundred yards from Oxford Circus, grew up a couple of miles away,and started crossing on the diagonal many many years before it was actively encouraged! It was one of the things that made me feel truly a local when gazing back at apprehensive tourists - the arrival of an approved diagonal was somewhat disappointing!

DavidC | 05.04.24 - 5:25 p.m. | #

When I travelled to Dublin, I hated how short the waiting times seemed to be for pedestrian crossings over there. Now I know why:

- In the UK, regulation assumes the pedestrian speed to be between 1 and 1.2 m/s, whereas in Ireland they're always a default 1.2 m/s.

- They have an amber man phase in pedestrian crossings over there, non-existent here. Not used to this possibility, I just felt nervous when the lights changed from a green man to an amber man in Dublin, as I'm used to consider only the green man time for timing my crossings.

Aspiring British | 05.04.24 - 7:01 p.m. | #

Replacing a pedestrian subway with a massive traffic crossing on the northeastern side? What a load of J Arthur...

scrogghill | 05.04.24 - 7:42 p.m. | #

What are the waiting times for a pedestrian green?
In Kyiv the red phase has a 'count up' to tell how long pedestrians must wait till they get a green.

Vert | 05.04.24 - 7:48 p.m. | #

Ken, It has been a few years since I was involved, but if I remember right SCOOT is set to severe, then spends a few weeks/ months learning how relaxed the phases can be and gets adjusted appropriately.
I first saw countdown on traffic signals for traffic in Burma (Myanmar) about 25 years ago, and sighed when TfL banged the gong about this new tech they were introducing about about 12 years later. Thailand has it for traffic also. I do wonder what effect it has on boy racers when the signals announce x seconds left until you get a red signal, which there can be a couple of minutes.

scrumpy | 06.04.24 - 12:44 a.m. | #

There’s a plan to remove the diagonal Shibuya crossing at Oxford Circus, which I hope doesn’t come true, following opposition from a vociferous grassroots protest campaign. If it is vanquished though, Old Street will win.

DeDomenici | Homepage | 06.04.24 - 1:24 a.m. | #

Victoria Street and Artillery Row has a surprinsingly high countdown - I think 17 or 18 seconds from memory.

Ted | 06.04.24 - 1:27 p.m. | #

gahh, skimmed the comments and that's already covered. Ignore me.

Ted | 06.04.24 - 1:28 p.m. | #

After checking onsite re my comment at 2.30pm yesterday - the countdown on the diagonal at Wood Green starts at 12, not at 16 or 17, as do the simultaneous countdowns on the shorter crossings.

Bob L-S | 06.04.24 - 5:58 p.m. | #

dg
> Everything else is known as the 'intergreen', this being the entire period the red or amber light is showing.

Not quite. The intergreen is just the *transition* period between one set of lights switching from green to red, and a conflicting set of lights subsequently switching from red to green.

So at a simple pedestrian crossing, you have two sets of intergreens – the first one after the vehicle signals have turned to amber and then red until the pedestrian signals go green, and then the same thing in reverse, starting from the pedestrian blackout phase until the vehicle green.


Herned
> Why not count down the red phase and the green phase for everybody?

The blackout phase has a fixed length because it is based purely on the crossing geometry, so a countdown for that is easy. Length of the green phase, especially a vehicular green phase (and the corresponding conflicting red phases) on the other hand can be varied on short notice based on traffic volumes, so with a countdown you'd lose that flexibility, because then the green times would always have to be set at least one signal cycle in advance.

Jonathan Wadman
> If metrication was properly implemented in this country we wouldn't have absurd situations like the one in Table 18-4 where vehicle speeds are measured in miles per hour and pedestrian speeds are measured in metres per second.

That mixture between metric and imperial is perhaps a tad more absurd, but even the German traffic lights manual still has to mix kph and m/s.

Jan | 08.04.24 - 9:19 a.m. | #

The Dutch have countdown timers telling pedestrians and cyclists how long they will wait for a green. It starts by indicating the worst case scenario, and will frequently jump forward based on the latest thinking of the traffic light computer.

Thus it doesn't require more rigid timing, just a bit of imagination.

(it's represented as a declining bar graph, so doesn't have to skip numbers)

Graham | 08.04.24 - 3:03 p.m. | #

Leaving London, Plymouth Cobourg St has a 21-second timer to cross three lanes to an island followed by another 16 to cross another two. But then we may have a different formula, anyways, here.

James | 10.04.24 - 6:32 p.m. | #











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