Diagonal crossing
The diagonal crossing (colloquially also everybody-go-crossing) is a special form of the all-red- switching, with which it is possible for pedestrians to cross the street crossing not only at right angles, but also diagonally. This does not include intersections where pedestrians cross the street at an angle due to the staggered junctions, e.g. B. in Aachen on Lochner Strasse / Karlsgraben. In English, a diagonal crossing is called "pedestrian scramble", "Barnes Dance" (USA and New Zealand), "diagonal crossing", "pedestrian priority phasing", "pedestrian criss-cross" or "x-crossing".
The intersection in front of Shibuya station in Tokyo is known worldwide .
At these crossings, all pedestrian lights are switched to green at the same time, so that pedestrians can not only switch from one side of the street to the opposite when they are green, but can also cross the crossing diagonally. With normal traffic lights, on the other hand, you would have to cross two streets to take the same route and usually wait at at least one pedestrian traffic light. During the green phase for pedestrians, all traffic lights are red.
Crossings with diagonal crossings can easily be recognized by the fact that pedestrian crossings are also marked across the crossing (in the diagonal direction) . In Japan these are marked as zebra crossings , which is not permitted in Germany. In addition, the pedestrian traffic lights have displays in three instead of two directions, namely also in the diagonal.
An intersection with diagonal crossings therefore has at least three traffic light phases (compared to normally two):
- Driving cars in the horizontal direction.
- Driving cars in the vertical direction.
- All pedestrians go.
The disadvantage is that pedestrians who only want to cross one street may have to wait longer than at a normal intersection (because the parallel pedestrian lights are not always switched to green during the auto phases).
This type of intersection already existed in isolated cases before the Second World War; however, it was not widely used in the USA until 1940 by the New York traffic engineer Henry Barnes . After him, the crossroads are also called "Barnes Dance".
In Japan , the diagonal crossing crossing was first introduced on March 5, 1969 in Kumamoto . Today there are over 300 such hybrids in Japan. They have become a characteristic feature of the areas around train station exits and in busy shopping areas , where pedestrian traffic is very high, and in Shibuya they have even become a frequently photographed landmark and symbol of the hustle and bustle of Tokyo (many people at the same time everywhere on the street) become.
The Japanese name ( Japaneseス ク ラ ン ブ ル 交 差点sukuranburu kosaten , sukuranburu as a transcription from the English 'scramble', see name above) means a ball of crosses. It comes from the fact that at this intersection everyone goes in all possible directions and therefore theoretically a tangle of pedestrians forms in the middle of the intersection, blocking each other. In practice, however, there is always a dominant direction (in Shibuya, for example, the diagonal Bahnhofstrasse and Centergai Street), so that only "recessive" pedestrians would speak of a "blocking" intersection.
In Germany there are diagonal crossings, which are also signaled and marked as such, only in Cologne (Neusser Straße / Wilhelmstraße and Mengenicher Straße / Schulstraße), Berlin (Friedrichstraße / Kochstraße) and Wuppertal (Loher Straße / Wartburgstraße). For this purpose, the traffic lights are equipped with additional pedestrian signal heads and markings in a diagonal direction. Another variant of the diagonal crossing went into operation in Darmstadt-Arheilgen (Messeler Straße / Untere Mühlstraße) in January 2012. This is a traffic light that only blocks traffic in all directions and enables crossing when requested by pedestrians. The all-round green signaling of pedestrians without diagonal crossing (all pedestrian traffic lights are green at the same time, diagonal crossing by pedestrians is therefore safe, but not communicated by floor markings or specially aligned traffic lights) is far more common in Germany. It is mostly used at lightly loaded nodes. Examples of heavily used intersections with simultaneous green phase of all pedestrian traffic lights are the intersections Saarstrasse / Hohenzollernstrasse and Paulinstrasse / Zeughausstrasse / Balthasar-Neumann-Strasse in Trier (as of 2020).
Web links
- Criss-cross - diagonal green is not a panacea for pedestrians
- Student thesis - assessment of the traffic quality and traffic safety of signaled intersections with diagonal crossing
- Municipal accident research 11 - diagonal crossing
Individual evidence
- ↑ Darmstädter Echo (echo-online.de) January 23, 2012: Simply diagonally across the intersection ( memento of the original from January 26, 2012 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. , accessed July 9, 2012
