Active mobility crossing on Avenue Emile Reuter in City of Luxembourg: how motorised traffic sees it

Zero Vision — the unbelievable case of City of Luxembourg’s Avenue Emile Reuter pedestrian crossing

Pedestrian crossings are a matter of road design. Design can be good or bad. The case of one very important crossing point for active mobility on Avenue Emile Reuter in City of Luxembourg is so striking, that it deserves its own blog post.

This blog post uses a lot of photographic impressions and several tweets to illustrate its point. For a better reading experience, here is the outline:

1. What is the active mobility crossing on Avenue Emile Reuter in City of Luxembourg: features and urban surroundings
2. Why is the active mobility crossing on Avenue Emile Reuter in City of Luxembourg dangerous for vulnerable road users: poor visibility caused by convexity of road in a large bend, bidirectional bus traffic, low sunlight blinding & distracted drivers
3. What could be done to increase safety of the active mobility crossing on Avenue Emile Reuter in City of Luxembourg: design features & traffic rules violations enforcement

Active mobility crossing on Avenue Emile Reuter in City of Luxembourg: how active mobility people see it. Very near to the center of the city, the crossing is directly in front of an old people’s home (orange building visible on photos).

1. The features and urban surroundings of an active mobility hot spot

The Avenue Emile Reuter has bidirectional bus traffic, multiple bus stops on both sides and two outgoing car lanes.

Avenue Emile Reuter has several crossing points. This blog article is specifically about the one marked with a yellow star between the park parts. The red circles do highlight the multiple ring roads close to the historical center of the city: none of them have a truly segregated bicycle lane. Cyclists avoid these ring roads and prefer ride through the park!

The crossing (yellow star on above map) is an important connection between two parts of urban park, the park itself being part of the local bicycle network used by people.

The park has been created in the second half of the XIXth century by the French botanist & park designer Edouard André on the remains of freshly dismantled fortress walls of Luxembourg.

The crossing (yellow star on above map) is daily used by a diverse mix of walking people, runners, bike commuters, bus commuters and wheel chaired people.

This is what cars approaching the active mobility crossing on Avenue Emile Reuter in City of Luxembourg do see: the paint of the zebra crossing is completely invisible from this point of view!

2. Poor visibility caused by convexity of road in a large bend, bidirectional bus traffic, low sunlight blinding & distracted drivers

The crossing has several major visibility issues.

A first one is related to the uneven surface of the road and the fact that the road is slowly turning. Just compare the above photo with the schematic of the below tweet, and it will be obvious. The paint on the road literally is invisible to car drivers not close enough to the pedestrian crossing. As drivers do concentrate on the bend of the road, attention left for watching out for pedestrian crossing is at a low level.

Visibility issue no. 1: the uneven surface of the road making zebra crossing invisible to approaching car drivers

Thanks to his elevated sitting height, a bus driver will always see the zebra crossing before car driver in normal cars will. Based on practical experience, it can by the way be assumed that the traffic signs hanging over the road and pointing out the pedestrian crossing are simply ignored or not seen by a lot of drivers.

In the evening rush hour, the low sun blinding car drivers going in direction of place de l’Etoile is yet another point to add to the poor visibility conditions around that pedestrian crossing. The photo below illustrates this.

In the evening rush hour time, the low sun is blinding car drivers on Avenue Emile Reuter

The constant traffic of buses in the previously mentioned large bend systematically does prevent car drivers of having a clear view on the action on the pedestrian crossing. The photo below documents very well how a large bus conceals one half of the pedestrian crossing — and people on it — from the view of incoming cars.

Active mobility crossing on Avenue Emile Reuter in City of Luxembourg has strong visibility issues making it unsafe. Lots of regular buses make this nearly permanent issue

Cars and especially buses that do stop, but do not wait that vulnerable users finished crossing are another specific source of danger, as drivers in the other lane can be led to conclude that the road is clear.

Last but not least, as drivers failing to stop are anyway not (or rarely) enforced by police, some drivers obviously don’t care. The risk is entirely outsourced to the vulnerable users community.

How it feels as a vulnerable road user to cross at Avenue Emile Reuter: it is even worse than on Robert Doisneau’s photo, as cars have a very limited view on the zebra crossing

3. On the need of better design features & enforcement of traffic rules violations

Crossing Avenue Emile Reuter in its current infrastructure form is a horrible experience for walking and cycling people. It probably isn’t even the nicest driving experience neither. Especially in winter time with limited day light. Paint on the ground is simply not enough here. Period.

Drivers of cars and buses seeing people wanting to cross and not stopping on purpose do just come on top of several inherent visibility issues specific to that crossing point.

If all people are equal, why do people in cars have a higher priority than people walking and cycling? How is it possible that it is still legally allowed to drive 50km/h on such a dangerous urban crossing point? Especially when one knows that pedestrian crossings are places where several people died the last years in Luxembourg!

This tweet shows another crossing between City of Luxembourg park parts, with problems comparable to Avenue Emile Reuter

These crossings between parts of the urban park are of high importance for active mobility. They without any doubt require and deserve to be made safer.

Building bridges is not possible everywhere. They aren’t even the best solution, as they are challenging to use, especially for disabled people in wheel chairs

When City of Luxembourg installed these barriers on active mobility crossing on Avenue Emile Reuter, the cycling community reacted negatively. Noteworthy: paths working around on left and right side appeared after a few weeks only

Putting barriers at entry and exit points of the park is of no help. Simple signs warning of car traffic crossing would do it too. Add flashing light to the signs if you want. The barriers simply don’t eliminate any of the inherent visibility issues on the pedestrian crossing. They are a pain to use for wheel chaired people and those riding larger bikes (cargo, trailer etc.).

The barriers are an illusion without a tangible safety gain; they annoy the active mobility community by adding a handicap perceived as completely useless and as visibly underlining the car-centric character of that avenue.

It is hard to understand why the money paid for these barriers has not been used to make the pedestrian crossing itself more visible to the car & bus traffic.

And there would be options for doing so. Speed breakers for example. Or installing a central island on the pedestrian crossing. Or installing poles to segregate the bike lane and other no driving areas.

Actively slowing down motorized traffic could be a better option: put the zebra crossing on top of a speed breaker!

Inserting a traffic island to slow down traffic and make it safer to cross wide streets would be another option

The active mobility crossing on Avenue Emile Reuter in City of Luxembourg from bird’s eye view: no poles, no traffic islands, no speed breakers, nothing more than just paint

If the City of Luxembourg really intends to walk the talk, the design of such crossings cannot remain car-centric. It really isn’t sustainable in this early 21st century to have motorised transit benefiting of a higher priority than active mobility that close to the historical center of this city!

“Zero vision” versus “vision zero” goal in road fatalities: the described pedestrian crossing in Avenue Emile Reuter is without any doubt a road safety nightmare, mainly because of its inherent and specific visibility issues.

This place needs an urgent makeover. It can only be hoped that the currently being built tram line will bring as a side effect that positive promised change for active mobility. And that nobody will be seriously injured on that pedestrian crossing until then.

Assuming the colored parts of the above maps give clues about the scope of that pedestrian audit (download link is broken), it becomes obvious that the path network in the parks was probably not included.

If the new mantra “move people, not cars” is applied, a better infrastructure design for pedestrian flows moving between parts of the park is required.

Active mobility crossing on Avenue Emile Reuter in City of Luxembourg: even a normal highway in Luxembourg does not have more lanes (but the highway would have better visibility!)

Cities should not be experienced mainly as traffic corridors, but boulevards closest to center in City of Luxembourg would probably fall in that “heavy traffic” category

Teaser: How would Edouard André, the designer of the park, react to today’s massive presence of motorized traffic on the avenues he initially helped to design for horse carriages & people walking on large sidewalks? His plans for City of Luxembourg started in 1871, in a time where cars were unknown on the roads and even bicycles were not a mass product yet.