Oakland, California's Chinatown has a higher than usual proportion of elderly pedestrians who make an unusually high number of trips on foot. As part of a broader program of enhancing pedestrian safety, the city installed what is known as a pedestrian scramble at one of the busier intersections where vehicle-pedestrian conflicts are common. The scramble is intended to reduce such conflicts by giving pedestrians exclusive access to an entire intersection by stopping traffic in all directions. A local community group is helping educate people who use the intersection about the new system. New signs for pedestrians have also been put up. Pedestrians also have to be conditioned to look for and respond to pedestrian signals, which are not present at many Chinatown intersections. The UC Berkeley Traffic Safety Center is in the process of evaluating the scramble.
Abstract