Pedestrian Scrambles
July 7, 2005 – 01:28
When I was visiting Taipei (precisely this time last year), there’s an intersection where at one point the pedestrians can cross the intersection diagonally (it’s near the Taipei City Hall). I thought it was peculiar because I’ve never seen it before. Just now I ran across the traffic light page on Wikipedia, it turns out that these type of intersections have a special name, called pedestrian scrambles.
The moral of the story is, you learn something new every time you read Wikipedia.
Tags: pedestrian scrambles, 台北
9 Responses to “Pedestrian Scrambles”
woo.. the same thing happened when i was in new zealand.. same kinda intersection.
By vhwen on Jul 7, 2005
it’s quite common in china
By okwanko on Jul 7, 2005
goes to show how little I know.
By David (aka deepmist) on Jul 7, 2005
The first time I saw this was in Ginza. If a city has it in somewhere, it is not really a thing to be proud of because frankly there is no real advantage of having something like that; yeah you can cross diagonally (so the pedestrians save time) but the traffic have to wait. Considering how low the road to area ratio Tokyo has, it is amazing that they still enjoy having a monster like that. (Probably they built the road that way and can’t remove it afterward.)
By lcmwlcmw on Jul 8, 2005
those kinda crosswalk happen when pedestrians take precedence over traffic; in other words, it is common where there’s very little traffic but alot of pedestrians… not enjoying having a monster like that, but built where it is necessary =)
By tinalin on Jul 8, 2005
Wow, 4 people replied to this.
In the case of that intersection near Taipei City Hall, there’s a lot of pedestrians and a lot of cars, and the cars had to wait very long before they can to go (which probably explains why there’s a lot of cars :p ).
By David (aka deepmist) on Jul 9, 2005
then let me make it 5 la… haha
wikipedia is cool…
By lewisy on Jul 11, 2005
what’s wikipedia exactly?
By iiduce100 on Jul 12, 2005
wikipedia.org is some sort of online encyclopedia. It is special in the way that anybody can edit or add articles.
By David (aka deepmist) on Jul 12, 2005