please empty your brain below

I notice these do/did have a button for pedestrians to press, on some crossings this does change the cycle, on others it just gives the pedestrians something to do, another timing variation is from induction loops embedded in the road (if fitted), if no vehicle is detected (for example for right turns) then that sequence is omitted. Finally these timings can be manually adjusted.

In your example I'm not a fan of having the road and pavement in the same colour, irrespective of the fact that you have tactile pavements.
TfL can install straight-across two stage crossings if the central island is wide enough - I think the minimum is about 6m. See Elephant & Castle for examples.
I always prefer crossings where you can see the conflicting traffic signals, but I guess adding that everywhere would make junction design a bit more complicated.
Only six seconds to cross the road is not a saintly stroll for elderly and infirm pedestrians.
It's 15 seconds to cross the road (six seconds of green man plus nine seconds of "do not start to cross").
For the three crossings in my area, I don't even press the button. There are other lights which means the traffic gets phased and there obvious gaps to quickly cross. I have observed many other people pressing the button, crossing in the gap and then having a empty crossing stopping the traffic.

Traffic engineers need to understand the pyschology of their users, both pedestrians and drivers. Traffic engineers try to control everyone too much and people ignore them or bypass the restrictions. The other alternative is that traffic engineers are covering their backsides to say it wasn't their fault there was an accident, which is just dumb for everyone.
The most pedestrian-friendly option would be a zebra crossing.

If the majority of pedestrians are not obeying the lights, then the system is clearly not fit for purpose.

The practice of hiding from the pedestrian the signal aspects shown to the driver at junctions seems to be more widespread. Near me there is a cross roads with no pedestrian controlled buttons that is very dangerous to cross because of this. The pedestrian has no idea what or when the signal being shown is. My guess is that signal engineers thing this is a very clever way of forcing pedestrians to react only to what cars are actually doing. But in reality it increases the risk, as you can't judge when a safe time to cross is, particularly when a car could arrive quickly unseen. Junction designers need to get out into the real world more.
Alan - if a zebra crossing was introduced here, it would result in the age old problem of the vehicle in the nearside lane stopping, and vehicles in the offside lane failing to stop and striking pedestrians on the crossing. Besides it is part of a signal controlled junction.

Is there an event management element to this? It is on a pedestrian route to the stadium and high flows are expected (note the width of the crossing), and the central island would not cope with the numbers on it during events, if this crossing were to be set up as a two stage crossing.

As a traffic engineer I would be very uncomfortable introducing a two stage crossing without a stagger anywhere, which is possibly a contributory factor as to why our road safety record in the UK is significantly better than that of the French, and amongst the best in Europe.
Time allowed to cross I would say is actually the 9 sec of the "do not start to cross" 'black out' phase.

My 'rule of thumb' walking speed is 6 km/hr (100 m/min), but TfL journey-planner is more pessimistic - 'slow' walking speed is 3 km/hr (50 m/min, or 0.83 m/sec) (from here : 'fast' is 5 km/hr, and 'medium' 4 km/hr).
At that speed (0.83 m/s) the 9 seconds would be adequate for a 7.5 m wide road, but (looking at Google satellite view) Waterden Road is more like 12.5 m wide, which would require 15 s.

I also found a research paper here , which has found various walking speeds; and also gives 'start up times' (after the green man comes up) of up to 4 sec.
Green person.
There are some fascinating figures here.

What interests me is how much greater a percentage of road deaths pedestrian deaths are compared to the rest of western Europe (particularly France). Maybe there is something to be learned from Johnny Foreigner.
Simon - there are some more recent figures here.
The UK's pedestrian fatality rate per million population is quite similar to France, Germany and most of Western Europe. Eastern Europe is much worse and the Netherlands is much better (2016 data).
We have two staged crossings here but they will come with a pedestrian button in the middle. Our fun game in the city back in the good old days when we had tourists was spot the German and Scandinavian tourists who would patiently wait for the green person to cross while we locals 'nipped across'. Even our major roads are so quiet now, everyone wanders across the road while taking no notice of lights, at quite oblique angles at times. Ah, that would be me.
Interestingly those stats Alan show a much higher pedestrian death rate for men over women across Europe, in the UK twice as high! I guess men tend to take more risks crossing the road.
They may be designed like that because of the number of events in the locality, where crossing pedestrians would swamp the capacity of the central refuge. They also use marshalls on major event days to beef up pedestrian safety.
It was a virgin site in 2013. An underpass would have been better.
I completely concur with @Traffic Engineer
I like the "countdown clocks" where they exist because they at least give you, as a pedestrian, information to help you to decide whether it is safe to cross or not.

In other places though it's pure pot luck as to how long you have to cross. What would also be useful is how long you have to wait before the green man will come on, especially at complicated junctions where little or no repeater information is provided. Bank springs to mind here.

In Southend at the Bus Station you have a 5 way junction where although the green man comes on eventually, there is no information provided to support the pedestrian at all. And accidents have occurred there as a result.
I'm definitely on the side of the Sinner!
I am familiar with this particular crossing and until a few weeks ago (and maybe still now?) that small green pedestrian phase would only occur if someone actually pushed the button. Some would wait patiently with others just grabbing their chance to do it when traffic permitted, in two halves if necessary.

The trend towards single stage crossings is particularly annoying to impatient people like myself!
I used to use a staggered two stage crossing EVERY DAY in a western London borough for 6 years. It was my biggest irritant of the day watching the 2nd set be green for no one, and turning to red as soon you made it across through the stagger (despite the fact, only 1 lane on the other side was moving, to turn right across a carriage way) which often simply didn't have anyone turning right. All it did was create a situation where lots of people just used a 'desire line' to cross 2 cars behind the white line.

I no longer have to suffer it, but in time the 5 or so passengers from the bus that used to get off daily, will do.
I wonder just how often Alan's zebra accidents occur. Zebra crossings remove the phantom pedestrian problem for the motorist at traffic light controlled ones and in my experience, every single driver has stopped on cue. They should be the defacto answer ~ fewer poles and less electricity usage too.

Where junctions are light controlled and come with pedestrian control, the balance is being tipped in favour of pedestrians at several trial sites across the capital.

Also it still amazes me the no. of people angrily fidgeting as they wait for the lights to change. It might just help if they pressed the button. This has got worse with the pandemic, but an elbow works as well as a finger on the button after a little practise.

In Germany I have been hauled to the police station for not waiting for der grĂ¼ne Mann. No protestations that there wasn't a car in sight accepted. Roolz is roolz. I do like the way that they never cross on red if there are kids waiting - don't set a bad example eh?
If one car is stopped at a zebra crossing, the zigzag marks on the road leading to it would tell other cars that they're not allowed to overtake, for the very reason that someone might be using the crossing.

In Havana, as well as green numbers counting down to when the lights would turn against the pedestrians, their crossings also had red numbers counting down to when the lights would turn in their favour, so people were prepared to wait patiently in the knowledge.
Jeremy: I'm not familiar with the intricacies of UK traffic lights design, but if this was a German traffic light, the five seconds of all-red phase would also be counted as part of the "time to finish crossing safely" phase (with respect to road traffic going east it's actually even a little bit more, as traffic needs to travel from its respective stop line all the way across the intersection until it reaches the pedestrian crossing we're talking about, but going west the stop line is of course right against the crossing, so that one will be the governing factor).

Since I'd actually make that crossing approximately 16 m across though, this gives you an assumed pedestrian clearance speed of 1.15 m/s, which interestingly isn't that far off from the default value used in Germany, 1.2 m/s. If you start crossing at the start of the green man, the minimum speed to make it across to the other side before the vehicular green would therefore be 0.8 m/s.

ActonMan: As nice as they can be, one problem with countdowns is that they don't work well with traffic lights that can dynamically react to the actual traffic, because in that case in can be difficult to make accurate predictions more than a few seconds ahead.
What I really dislike are the newer crossings where the green person isn't across the road but on the pole to your right. I believe the idea is to make people look in the direction of oncoming traffic but the light is often obscured by other pedestrians. Also at night, particularly if it's misty, you look across and see a green man - which is actually the one for the road at right angles to the one you're crossing.
I hate the countdown clock because it's as unreliable as a TfL next train minute. 0 sometimes means the traffic lights go green instantly, elsewhere it can be as much as a 5 second wait. 0 should mean 0.
I know your post wasn't about this junction in particular, but this junction in particular is currently part of a consultation about walking and cycling in the Olympic Park, and has attracted a lot of comments. All negative.

(Curious that they're consulting on the current setup, given they've already got a traffic engineers' report on how to improve it.)

I've also realised the park does have a straight across two stage crossing on its fringes - at Leadmill Lane, the entrance to the Hockey and Tennis Centre. Nice to have a bit of consistency.










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