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Streetfilms: The Pedestrian Scramble Returns to L.A.

3:56 PM EST on November 7, 2008

Clarence Eckerson's newest Streetfilm captures the bustle of pedestrians and cyclists using diagonal crosswalks near the USC campus. It's entrancing footage, even without the benefit of time-lapsed film. LADOT recently added 10 of these crossings around the metro area, but as Clarence discovered in the course of making the video, the "pedestrian scramble" isn't completely novel to L.A.:

...as it turns out, this new idea is something old. Thanks to some nifty sleuthing, Eric Richardson of blogdowntown uncovered the fact that the downtown L.A. area was once littered with two dozen diagonal crosswalks in the late 1950s.Removed in 1958 because a city engineer's report found they impeded cartraffic flow, the lesson is obvious: let's not wait another fifty yearsto deploy a tool to keep pedestrians safe.

And if you want to watch something that now seems extra silly, we did something fun on Barnes Dances early in the year. You have been warned.

Ben Fried
Ben Fried started as a Streetsblog reporter in 2008 and led the site as editor-in-chief from 2010 to 2018. He lives in Ditmas Park, Brooklyn, with his wife.

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