According to LAist, the City of Santa Monica will be putting in eleven pedestrian scrambles to help make the streets safer and attempt to prevent Santa Monica pedestrian accidents. Because of the amount of foot traffic in downtown Santa Monica, we hope that these measures will help prevent accidents and help move traffic along at a more efficient pace.
The pedestrian scrambles function by stopping all cars in all directions at the designated intersections so that pedestrians can cross in all directions, including diagonally across an intersection. With cars stopped in all directions, this should lead to fewer people getting hit by a car in Santa Monica.
Also, because drivers will not have to wait for pedestrians to cross when making turns, this should help cause less traffic congestion on the streets of downtown Santa Monica. The counter argument would be that since there must be a significant time after each traffic cycle where all vehicles are stopped, this could cause certain traffic backlogs.