The Guardian's Peter Walker:
The redesigned Oxford Circus, which opened this morning after a two-year, £5m makeover, contains two big innovations. As well as crossing the intersection laterally, pedestrians now have a 30-second window when all traffic stops and they can go at a diagonal along a giant X marked into the junction with metal studs. Known to road engineers, slightly alarmingly, as a "pedestrian scramble", it is modelled on the famously frantic junction adjoining Shibuya station in central Tokyo.
Interesting start. Sounds like the lights might have to be re-phased, though. Now read on.
