So, the John St/Riddiford St/Adelaide Rd inter­sec­tion has under­gone a bit of a lights phas­ing tweak. It took this par­tic­u­lar Wel­ling­tonista by sur­prise when, last week, I con­fid­ently star­ted to cross John St as the lights turned to red, only to dis­cov­er that instead of my little green man, I was now the tar­get for traffic com­ing down from Adelaide Rd.

There’s been some good that’s come from the change – the most obvi­ous one being that ped­es­tri­ans cross­ing John St (with the green man, that is), are no longer in danger of being skittled by right-turn­ing traffic from Adelaide Rd head­ing up John St (it was a com­mon trick for the first one or two cars in that queue to dive across the inter­sec­tion as soon as the lights turned green).

On the oth­er hand, ped­es­tri­ans cross­ing at the same place now have to con­tend with traffic run the orange (or, even the red!) from Rid­di­ford St and head­ing up John St. Every single morn­ing I’ve had to cross at that point, cars have sailed through the inter­sec­tion a good few seconds after the green man has gone off. It’s par­tic­u­larly bad if you’re cross­ing south-to-north, as the traffic is com­ing from behind you, out of your line of sight. It won’t be long before someone gets knocked over: mark my words!

How’s it work­ing out for you? Drivers – any thoughts?