Planners do get stuff wrong from time to time in the sense that people don't behave quite like they think or that one group gets disproportionally annoyed with changes. I can cite much larger schemes in this city where planners have supposedly got it wrong and there's a "u turn. But it's been rectified in this case and what was the purpose of the light in the first place?
Map view here
The Brewery site was developed as a cinema/restaurant/shopping complex and sits on the side of the northern relief road (NRR Or 'St'Margarets Rd') which takes most of the traffic passing through the town from Oxford to the M5. They decided to build a multi story car park to serve this complex on the other side of the road with the entrance in Monson Avenue (MA) and narrowed MA which has the knock on effect of stopping cars turning into MA from having free passage to carry on past the car park if they weren't going into it, and put a set of lights directly on top of the car park entrance in MA for some bizarre reason which only allows the cars to exit the car park when they turn to green which traps them in the car park.
They then put in a pedestrian crossing to allow the peds to cross the NRR to the complex, but made the stupid mistake of attaching a set of traffic lights on the island which acted as a direction control for traffic passing along the NRR but didn't put in a stop line there.
The lights would change to green in the side road, Cars would turn onto the NRL see the red lights in front of them and stop which would then back up MA and allow only about 2 cars out at a time from either MA or the multi story car park.
The whole area has been engineered to obstruct free passage of vehicles which would be all well and done if they offered an alternative (but they don't). The changes to the lights have made a big improvement to the area but I'd never consider using the car park as I either walk, cycle or know better places to park if I am driving in.
I'm interested as to what sort of problems you think a 20 zone might cause other than emboldening pedestrians to reclaim their streets or people putting their foot down as soon as they get out of the zone or tiredness.
I'm sorry, but they have put pavements for people to use across the vast majority of the town centre. What is wrong with people using these spaces. The very vast majority of cars don't use the pavements, but there are a lot of cyclists who turn these supposedly safe area's into places where people can never let their guard down. As for people 'putting their foot down' outside the 20 zones, if there isn't a substantial risk to vast numbers of people or schools etc, what is wrong with them doing 30 in a 30 if it is clear to do so ? You turn the situation into an 'us and them' and it simply isn't the case
I don't take the idea of people stepping out in front of vehicles because they think they'll stop too seriously as a negative because people step out in front of vehicles in a not too dissimilar fashion on 40 and 60 roads out of desperation and poor pedestrian facilities. People die doing this.
So petition for better road crossing facilities if this is the case. A line of cars travelling in a 20 zone is no more likely to stop than a line of cars in a 30 zone. This is down to the discretion of the drivers in either zone, and if people are so cavalier to risk their lives because they are too impatient to wait for a gap in the traffic or too lazy to find a place which offers good visibility and is clear to cross, then whose fault is that ? - did you not learn the green cross code as I did, and I taught it to my kids. What gives anyone more right claim right of way over anyone else on the road just because they are on foot (unless they are crossing a side road) ?
I don't think tiredness is a serious issue because journeys won't be 50% longer.
