road improvement

In the previous post, I talked about Exhibition Road, but this is far from the only road project in London. In a different part of town, a small change was made to the street layout a bit more than a year ago, limited to one intersection but nevertheless hailed as visionary, the beacon of a bright future that would spread from this one point until it engulfed the Big Smoke in its entirety. The vision was a better integration of different modes of surface transport, the safer and more efficient coexistence of buses, cabs, cycles, cars, delivery vans, and pedestrians. The change that pointed towards happiness and mutual respect was the redesign of Oxford Circus.

Oxford Circus is the intersection of Oxford St., Europe's busiest retail strip, and Regent St., its upscale sister. Oxford Circus is chronically congested, by private cars crossing as you would expect but even more so by public transport and pedestrians, so much so that the tube station underneath can be inaccessible during rush hour because its four entrances, one at each corner of the intersection, are clogged with crowds stuck trying to get in and out. When I go from the Photographers' Gallery to the Wallace Collection for a quiet tea after an arresting exhibition, I reach my destination quicker and with less shoulder-bashing if I stroll a little to the north or south, avoiding Oxford Circus.

Hordes of bargain-hunting tourists from Europe's various economic disaster areas wash along the sidewalks at all hours of the day, frequently spilling into the streets, blocking black cabs, red buses and colorful cycle rickshaws. People that have evidently given up all hope for their embattled countries' economic survival conspire to bail out England. They invest the cash they've accumulated in decades of property speculation and tax evasion in Chinese-made fashion and gadgets, by way of England's busiest high street, which has become famous for exceptional value ever since the pound tanked four years ago.

Alleviating congestion must have been on the mind of planners when they set out. Safety was probably another concern. Oxford Circus never felt particularly dangerous to me, but it's easy to see the potential for disaster with crowds constantly pushing across asphalt tributaries where traffic never stopped. The borough council thus decided on a radical redesign of the traditional light-controlled crossroads.

The solution, modeled on Tokyo's famous Shibuya crossing, is characterized by a third phase of lights. Besides the customary two green phases for vehicles – one for east-west, the other for north-south traffic – there is now one reserved for pedestrians: All traffic is stopped and people are allowed to cross any which way including, for maximal exchange and confusion, diagonally. When traffic moves, all pedestrians are stopped.

It is likely that the redesign is both safer and more efficient. After all, turning vehicles won't have to yield to crossing pedestrians anymore. What is more striking, though, is that the new crossing is visually appealing and fun. People can be seen crossing several times in a row for the sheer joy of walking diagonally across an intersection in the face of an armada of mighty double-deckers standing to attention all around them.

According to pundits, authorities and the wider public in rare unison, the redesign of Oxford Circus has been an unqualified success. It did, as a direct consequence, focus attention on another road layout redesign that was underway at the time, a project that has now, after more than three years of work and the investment of 29 million pounds, been completed. This project was the conversion of Exhibition Road, a stretch of road barely three quarters of a mile long that runs from South Kensington station to Hyde Park's Alexandra Gate and forms the eastern boundary of the Imperial College campus where I work.

The result of all the effort: The pavement has now a pattern and the curbs are gone. Pedestrians are allowed to cross the road at an angle, but that's where the similarities with the Oxford Circus redesign end. In fact, the project has turned out to be such a disaster in my eyes that I have felt compelled to set down in writing every little flaw and failure. The sheer number of shortcomings has turned what started out as a regular post into a diatribe of such heft that I can't possibly hammer regular readers with it and have decided to post it to my much-neglected website instead.

I won't blame you if the summary is enough for you: Oxford Circus nice, Exhibition Road nasty.