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Dangerous Hollywood & Highland Intersection Getting Diagonal Crosswalks
Hollywood and Highland (Photo by John Verive via the Creative Commons on Flickr)
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The congested intersection of Hollywood and Highland—one of L.A.'s most dangerous intersections for people on foot—will be getting a new design.L.A. City Councilmember Mitch O'Farrell announced today that the busy intersection of Hollywood and Highland will be redesigned, changing into a type of diagonal crosswalk design known as 'scrambles' or 'Barnes dances,' named for traffic engineer Henry A. Barnes. The project will cost $50,000 to complete and should be finished by the end of the year, City News Service reports.
Scrambles work by providing moments where only pedestrians will be in the intersection. So, instead of pedestrians crossing the streets horizontally and vertically, traffic on all four sides, scrambles allow pedestrians to also cross diagonally. Then, vehicle and bike traffic will open up again. Hopefully, this will ease the flood of pedestrians at this popular tourist destination and prevent them from spilling outside of crosswalks.
Mayor Eric Garcetti has been pushing for scrambles to be implemented at busy crosswalks since last year, beginning with those near Metro stations. Hollywood and Highland was one of those intersections mentioned, along with 7th and Flower streets, and Aliso and Alameda streets in downtown L.A.
Los Angeles has installed and later removed scrambles before, including 25 that were placed downtown after World War II, then removed them after the City received several complaints. Scrambles can currently be found in Pasadena, Beverly Hills and near USC and UCLA, according to Streetsblog.
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Here's a scramble in action in Tokyo.
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