Kings Cross Environment

I am a Camden resident from just south of the Euston Road who went on the Living Streets Pedestrian Audit last week. The overarching theme for me was describing how the Euston Road cuts through and divides the communities to the north and south of it. It is effectively a six-lane motorway cutting through a dense residential area.

Its something to think about that visitors from Europe coming out of St Pancras station find themselves coming straight out into this extremely pedestrian unfriendly environment. The street architecture and layout is fundamentally designed for vehicles rather than pedestrians.

Improvements made for pedestrians are welcome but we shouldn't forget the big picture here and perhaps the possibility of some radical redesign of the street layout in future.

On a more specific note we looked in particular at the crossings over the Euston Road and side roads immediately in front of Kings Cross station and to the west as far as the crossing on the west side of Judd Street over towards the British library complex. The following points were noted:

1. The crossing over St Pancras Road between the two mainline stations effectively took pedestrians through a very long 'S'-shaped walk via a central pedestrian island, and the timing of the traffic lights was heavily weighted against pedestrians. We experienced waits of more than a minute for the green man to appear. As a result of this many pedestrians chose to ignore the designated crossing routes and lights and take their chances with the traffic.

2. The pedestrian crossing lights going across the Euston Road on the west side of St Pancras Way were also heavily weighted against pedestrians. Once green pedestrians were given a crossing time of only about eight seconds!

3. It was noted that the crossing going directly over the Euston Road from Kings Cross station to the Post Office had been removed. This forces pedestrians to either make diversions to the east or west to cross the road or use the underpass. Not all people felt comfortable using the underpass.

4. The pedestrian crossings across the Euston Road at the Judd Street junction were also highly unsatisfactory. On one side the green man lasted a mere five to six seconds while on the west side crossing is highly dangerous. There are no pedestrian lights at all. Pedestrian crossing here would have to continually look at the vehicle traffic lights as they were crossing with little warning of when the cars would start rolling again at the green lights.

Tobias Newland