Work by Island Roads to upgrade pedestrian crossings across the Island is in full swing.
Under the Highways Improvement Partnership, Island Roads will be upgrading 14 crossing sites before the winter. That is on top of 10 sites that have been improved already this year and 40 others since 2013.
The work mainly involves upgrading the sites to become ‘puffin’ crossings – a name taken from ‘pedestrian user-friendly intelligence’. This type of crossing is seen as an improvement to ‘pelican’ crossings as they include infra-red cameras that detect the presence of pedestrians.
This makes the crossing ‘intelligent’ as it can increase or reduce the time for which the traffic light remains red. This helps pedestrians as they are not required to walk faster and the crossing remains red until pedestrians are safely across. As such, unlike the pelican crossing, there is no transitional “flashing” phase.
In addition, the lights do not turn red if they have been pushed by someone who is not standing waiting to cross. This means motorists are not subjected to unnecessary delays.
The puffin crossings are also configured so the green man crossing illumination is positioned not on the opposite side of the road as in traditional crossings but instead at the near road side. This means a pedestrian should be better able to see cars that have failed to stop at the green signal as oncoming traffic remains in the eyeline of people looking for the sign to change.
Another benefit of puffin crossings is that having the lights closer to the user assists visually impaired people who could have difficulty viewing the signal from across the carriageway.
Island Roads powered apparatus manager Scott Burborough said:
“For these various reasons, puffin crossings are seen as more advanced than the pelican crossings they are replacing so this programme should make a valuable improvement to the safety of the network.
“As these crossings are traditionally in busy areas then the replacement programme can lead to some disruption.
“We would like to thank motorists for their ongoing co-operation and understanding and hope that they appreciate the work will make an important contribution to keeping our roads as safe as possible.”
A nd they feel the need to do this in August???
You couldn’t make it up could you?.
S@@T for brains, just like the council.
Ok so they are updating to newer more intelligent systems. but why did it need to take a month to do the Church Litten/south street junction.
On the mainland it would have been done over about 3-4 nights. Surely 3-4 nights would have been cheaper than 5 men standing around for a month of weekdays.
I regret to say that it was quite a bit more than a month
The circus duo that is island roads and the council the clowns choose to do major road works in peak tourist season to cause as much chaos as possible am sure alot of these works could wait till after summer. Also the council and island roads want to waste millions of pounds redoing st Mary’s roundabout “WHEN IT’S COPPINS BRIDGE THAT CAUSES ALL THE TRAFFIC ISSUES AROUND NEWPORT” and it as since the day the diabolical work of junk was constructed.And everyone knows that. but both the council and island roads seems to be in complete DENIAL about it.
I say put the money they are going to spend on st mary’s Roundabout and put it to a bridge over the medina, that will alleviate the traffic that is going to east Cowes and Ryde from needing to go into Newport/ coppins bridge!
Plus it will be a lot less disruption on the Newport road whilst the works is carried out!!
But as the councillor said “We don’t know what we are talking about!”
Can anyone tell me why two green men one above the other is more pedestrian friendly than having one the other side of the road where you can see it? As for being able to watch the traffic trying to jump the green lights, why haven’t the council taken over responsibility for people stopping in yellow box zones? Surely they are missing yet another way to fleece drivers? As for the crossing by Morrisons, I would rather cross further down where I can see what the traffic is doing, having lost my psychic abilities some years back
“This means a pedestrian should be better able to see cars that have failed to stop at the GREEN signal” !!!!