Streetfilms: The Pedestrian Scramble Returns to L.A.

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 car
traffic flow, the lesson is obvious: let’s not wait another fifty years
to 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.