Pedestrian refuge island, London, preceding the onslaught of the motorcar (via Flickr)

Listen, it don’t really matter to me baby

You believe what you want to believe

You see you don’t have to live like a refugee (Don’t have to live like a refugee)

Yeah Somewhere, somehow, somebody

Must have kicked you around some

Tell me, why you wanna lay there

Revel in your abandon

It don’t make no difference to me baby

Everybody’s had to fight to be free

You see you don’t have to live like a refugee (Don’t have to live like a refugee)

Now baby you don’t have to live like a refugee (Don’t have to live like a refugee) No!

Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers – Refugee Lyrics | MetroLyrics

I think Tom Petty speaks not of the oppressed living in third world conditions, but rather his girlfriend. The lyrics however apply to the pedestrian trapped on refuge island between two stream of traffic (perhaps this post should be Islands in the Stream – nah)

The pedestrian refuge island allows the pedestrian to cross some of the lanes of a roadway without crossing all of the lanes of a roadway. If the lanes are going in two directions, this might decrease the travel time to cross the street, by increasing the likelihood of finding a safe gap in traffic (since you are more likely to find an acceptable gap in fewer lanes than more lanes) and reduce the number of objects the pedestrian is looking for.

The refuge island is presumably a safety improvement (the evidence is that all else equal, it is: See, e.g. Retting et al. (2003) for a review of this and other crash counter-measures). However pedestrians with pedestrian refuge islands may also be more aggressive and ignore traffic control devices since there is a refuge only a few lanes away. (I have observed this to happen almost daily), particularly when lights are timed with long cycles (e.g. resulting in waits > 50s). It also adds to the total crossing distance, and potentially time if there are no cars (remember most roads are empty most of the time). But these effects are smaller than the main  safety benefit.

So far, so good – safety first and all. However, the existence of the refuge island makes it possible for the traffic engineer, and worse the driver, to even further subjugate the needs and rights of pedestrians. It creates an environment where the pedestrian must seek refuge from oncoming traffic, which implicitly has the right-of-way, rather one where the motor vehicles must yield to pedestrians who seek to cross.

This is a problem of first best and second best. In a second best world, where pedestrians have no rights, this is the literal life-jacket being thrown to them so they don’t sink in the traffic stream. In a first best world, there would be no stream in which to sink. Life should not be a game of Frogger.