To some, it's an ingenious solution to the problem of getting people across the street without getting them hit by a car. To others, the crazy crosswalks that dot Beverly Hills and Old Pasadena signify a breakdown in the social order, a kind of legitimized chaos.
At the very least, the diagonal crosswalks look funny.
Instead of one set of pedestrians crossing on green lights with the flow of traffic--while other pedestrians wait at red lights--those at diagonal crosswalks wait on all four corners until the cars are stopped in both directions. Then they cross any which way they like.
No need to jaywalk on these corners. The quicker diagonal is acceptable--downright encouraged, in fact, by signs.
"It goes against everything mother told you," said 27-year-old Jill Frankel, who lives in Beverly Hills. "But it looked like a quicker way to get to where I wanted to be--and legally, no less."
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Beverly Hills installed 10 diagonal crosswalks (also known as scramble crosswalks) in its business district in late 1986, primarily in an effort to improve safety.
With the exception of two particularly busy intersections--where cars tend to back up--the program has been successful, said Bijan Vaziri, the city's associate transportation engineer. The two problem signals have been changed.
The system works because in traditional crosswalks, pedestrians and cars come into conflict when the cars make turns. Diagonal crosswalks segregate the two groups. Traffic cycles in Beverly Hills are 60 seconds: 20 seconds for north-south traffic, 20 seconds for east-west traffic and 20 seconds for pedestrian traffic.
"It's a statement that the roadways are not only for cars, they are for pedestrians also," said Serop Der-Boghossian, a former traffic engineer for Beverly Hills and Pasadena who now is a traffic consultant for a private firm.
A friendlier pedestrian environment also means increased foot traffic for downtown businesses, said Chrissy Pearce, manager at Crate & Barrel in Pasadena, which sits on a scramble-walk corner.
Put simply, Pearce said, "It makes it easier for customers to get across the street."
This is not the first time scramble crosswalks have been used in the Los Angeles area.
In the 1940s, similar programs were tried, then canceled, in the city of Los Angeles--as they were later in Las Vegas, on Long Island and other places. "It was a disaster," said Brian Gallagher, a Los Angeles transportation engineer.
