Not quite thoughtful enough.

But it’s staggered in the opposite manner. The offset is to the left as you cross the street (as in your example), but the far lane of traffic moves from right to left, putting the pedestrian’s back to oncoming traffic as they shift toward the 2nd half of the crossing.

From a pedestrian perspective, the stagger seemed designed to prevent people riding their bikes or skating across the crosswalk, or generally rushing out into oncoming traffic. You could stagger the crossing in either direction to get that effect. So why not stagger toward oncoming traffic?

It occurred to me that from a vehicular perspective offseting against the flow of traffic prevents drivers from using that gap in the median as an impromptu turning lane. In the photo you posted, I think they’ve installed yellow pillars to prevent that. They also retain most of the median. In San Francisco, the crossing is at pavement level and although it’d be a tight fit for anything other than a motorcycle or smart car, a U-turn would be possible if the stagger weren’t sharply against the flow of traffic.

Just seemed like an interesting counterexample.

However, the “sheep pen” crossing is inherently a bad design for pedestrians and no amount of making it more “thoughtful” can hide the fact that most pedestrians will have to walk off their desire line to use it. They will have to walk double the length of the crossing out of their way if they’re going the wrong way (ie. down to the start of the crossing, then all the way back along it or vice versa).

This seems to matter little when the crossing is relatively short, but when it’s long it’s a real problem that causes many pedestrians simply to circumvent the thing entirely and cross in a place which is presumably more dangerous and at which drivers aren’t specifically alert to crossing pedestrians.

Imagine a crossroads that runs NS/WE. It has a 30 metre sheep pen on the southern approach road which reads from W to E, that is, it follows the desire line for pedestrians crossing from W to E by having its entrance on the W side of the road at the junction itself and its exit on the E side 30m S of the junction.

You can see a real one here:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/adrianshort/2307647900/

For pedestrians starting on the W side, the possibilities are:

- cross and continue E, walk 60m off desire line.
- cross and continue N, walk 60m off desire line.
- cross and continue S, on desire line.

For pedestrians starting on the E side at the junction, the possibilities assuming they’re going to walk S to the start of the crossing are:

- cross and continue W, walk 60m off desire line.
- cross and continue S, walk 60m off desire line.
- cross and continue N, walk 60m off desire line.

For pedestrians starting on the E side of the junction but approaching from the S so that they meet the entrance to the crossing without having to walk out of their way:

- cross and continue N, on desire line.
- cross and continue S, not strictly on desire line but walking no further than if they had to walk to the junction for a safe direct crossing
- cross and continue W, on desire line.

Observing actual behaviour at these crossings tells us what we’d expect: that most pedestrians coming from E to W at the junction choose to “unsafely” cross around the outside of the sheep pen barriers rather than take a 60m detour to use it “correctly”.

Moral: You can build a very inconvenient crossing for pedestrians in the name of safety but in the name of convenience most will completely ignore it.