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This year, San Jose celebrates 20 years of its Turkey Trot. I believe for all the turkeys to be safe, the streets are closed to cars this year … probably the years before as well. But when the streets aren’t closed, how would we keep these turkeys safer? At intersections, the turkey would presumably have right-of-way already, but what about mid-section in front of a school or park? How would a driver at a higher speed recognize a place where our turkey might want to cross? Traffic engineers in the UK must have asked themself the exact same question, so they first tried with poles and signs, but when tunnel vision came into play, those weren’t enough. So, the traffic engineers went back to the drawing board and started to experiment with painting the streets.
First Try: Zebra Crossing (1951)
The experimentation with colors and markings had already started in 1940. But the actual birth year is said to be 1951. The name Zebra Crossing was apparently first given by Jim Callaghan before he became UK Prime Minister. Some drawbacks of a zebra crossing are that the markings are hard to see at night, invisible under snow, or just too easy to ignore. Stopping still seemed kind of optional to drivers. The humble zebra crossing received a considerable celebrity boost when it was featured by The Beatles on their album Abbey Road in 1969.
Conclusion: the zebra crossing wasn’t safe enough!
Short-term fix: Panda Crossing (1962)
The traffic engineers were looking for better signaling at all times and in all weather conditions. Better signaling and a more forced stop for drivers came with the Panda crossing. The panda crossing was a type of signal-controlled pedestrian crossing used in the United Kingdom from 1962 to 1967. This crossing was another experimental version of a safer pedestrian crossing. The most interesting part about the panda crossing might be this quote: “The panda crossing deliberately omitted any sort of ‘Don’t cross’ message for pedestrians in order to avoid breaching right-of-way laws.” Now, the turkey would also have some extra problems with pressing the button and such …
Conclusion: the Panda crossing wasn’t safe enough!
The Pelican Crossing (1969)
The Panda crossing didn’t survive too long and was replaced by the X-Way crossing, eventually leading to the next type of crossing celebrating the pelican. The Pedestrian Light Controlled crossing was shortened to PELICON Crossing, which led to its cute name, Pelican Crossing.
The pelican crossing was famously featured in the PBS TV show Endeavor. In episode Pylon (S6 E1) Endeavor’s boss Chief Superintendent Reginald Bright had been demoted to the traffic police. He became the Pelican Man running public service announcements on TV. The song “If the Pelican Man can, so can you” made him famous with turkeys and kids. And that fame later saved his live.
The big problem with this type of crossing was that it required a call or beg button – not a good infrastructure for our turkey. It had a red man, a green man, and a flashing green man. At the same time, when the flashing green man is shown to pedestrians, a driver will see a flashing yellow light. When multiple parties think they can beat the system if they are fast enough, then bad things can happen, and apparently, they did.
Conclusion: the pelican crossing wasn’t safe enough!
Puffin Crossing
The “Pedestrian User-Friendly Intelligent (Puffin) crossing is somewhat older, but really came to life when it was decided to phase out the pelican crossing starting in 2016. The biggest difference might be that the flashing green man is gone now. The second big difference is that the green and red men are now on the near side of the intersection instead of the opposite side of the street, which is also why many pedestrians don’t like it. You might start your march across the street, but you never know if the green man has changed to red already. With a pelican crossing you had the red and green man in the front of you, now you leave them behind. There is a rumor the Transport of London (TfL) might be phasing out installations of new Puffin crossings already, but it isn’t clear what the upgrade would look like. How they would work for our turkey isn’t clear either.
Conclusion: the Puffin crossing might not be safe enough!
Toucan Crossing
So far, all mentioned crossings have been about turkeys or people walking, but how about turkeys and people on bicycles? What’s good for the goose is good for the gander, or in other words, Two Can cross the road, and hence the toucan crossing was born. At this point, the bicycle crossing might have a green bicycle light on either the far side (pelican crossing) or near side (puffin crossing). Either way, it might be nicer for cyclists, but still may not be an improvement for our turkey.
Conclusion: the Toucan crossing might not be safe enough!
Pegasus Crossing
Woodside and Portola Valley could use the Pegasus crossing. In that case, people on foot and on horseback can cross at the same crossing. For people riding their horses, they have call buttons some two meters above the ground. I can’t imagine two call buttons at different heights making it easier for our turkey.
Conclusion: the Pegasus crossing might not be safe enough!
Hawk Beacon
While names like Puffin, Panda, Toucan or Pegasus are mainly used in Great Britain and Ireland for animal crossings of various types, the US has its own animal crossing: the Hawk Beacon.
The Hawk Beacon is comparable to the pelican crossing in that a turkey or pedestrian might have the right of way, but the driver might assume they don’t really have to stop because of a flashing signal. So why is the US phasing in the Hawk Signal when its UK original is already being phased out? This pedestrian infrastructure would clearly violate Vision Zero.
Conclusion: the Hawk crossing might not be safe enough!
So, if all these animal crossings are to be considered unsafe for our turkey, what would a real animal crossing look like?
Meet the Mountain Lion Crossing
Now this is a completely different type of animal crossing, this one would actually work for our turkey. According to a California roadkill report published by UC Davis, I-280 is one of the deadliest freeways for wildlife:
“Tens of thousands of mountain lions, bears, bighorn sheep, squirrels, birds and lizards have met their fate in collisions with vehicles across California.The report names Interstate 280 between San Bruno and Cupertino as California’s deadliest highway. In fact, five of the top-20 ‘hot spots are along I-280, costing the state about $5.8 million annually in damage and cleanup costs, researchers estimated.“
Since wildlife like squirrels or lizards or pumas have a harder time finding and hitting a call button and waiting for a green flashing man, none of the previously mentioned crossings would work here. What they need is a real separation of speed and power, they need tunnels and bridges that are avoiding any possible contact with high speed cars. A network of crossings over the Trans-Canada Highway has reduced elk collisions to virtually zero – now that deserves to be called Vision Zero.
Conclusion
One might think a crossing named Pelican, Puffin, Toucan, or Hawk would be perfect for our Thanksgiving Turkey to use as well. But who would have thought the safest way of crossing the road for turkeys and pedestrians might really be the dangerous sounding Mountain Lion Crossing?
Happy Thanksgiving!
More Information
- The Striped History
- The inherent danger of Pelican Crossings
- The Puffin Crossing
- UK Driving Test: The Puffin Crossing
- Roadkill Report names deadliest highways
- RWCPulse: Helping Animals Across Highways
- Curbed: World’s Largest Wildlife Crossing
- Canada: Banff’s famed wildlife overpasses turn 20
Editor’s Note: The views and opinions expressed in all blog posts are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect those of the Redwood City Pulse or its staff.
