Vibrant or dangerous? Colourful roundabout redesign divides village

Horrendous and dangerous - or fresh and vibrant?

The California Cross junction in Finchampstead, Berkshire, has been described as both.

The product of a broader £5.5m seven-month revamp, the double roundabout and five crossings with distinctive leaf designs has divided opinion amongst locals, with 1,400 signing a petition calling for it to be gone.

Residents have raised concerns about the cost of the work, as well as the safety of a junction that doesn't exactly follow convention.

But how dangerous is it?

The junction consists of two roundabouts, each with three exits. Each exit has a crossing for pedestrians.

But instead of a zebra crossing with black and white stripes, there is a distinctive white leaf design - and instead of a roundabout with a standard central island, there's an array of rainbow leaves painted on the road.

The changes were made as part of a wider project for the area, which also included drainage works.

I drove to the California Cross junction at midday on a sunny Thursday.

On approach, it didn't look much like a roundabout, although this wasn't helped by the fact my sat nav app didn't register it as one.

I drove across the first white leaf crossing and round the rainbow leaf roundabout with no issues, pausing only slightly before the second crossing, suddenly unsure of where the "give way" line was.

Once I was across the second roundabout, I parked up and tried it by foot. And, as a pedestrian, the unease of other road users was far more obvious.

I found I couldn't stand still for more than a few seconds without a driver thinking I was waiting to cross and stopping, even if I wasn't anywhere near the white leaf crossings.

People who were waiting to cross at the pedestrian crossings often waited for the go-ahead from cars, despite the fact they had priority.

On more than one occasion I saw a driver fail to give way to the right, cutting up another driver - but the other driver didn't seem angry, as if they couldn't be completely sure it had even been their right of way.

In the 15 minutes I was there, I saw three near-misses where drivers had to brake suddenly, all that appeared to have been caused by road users not knowing who had priority.

And at the other end of the scale were the drivers who ripped across the junction, either knowingly or accidentally taking advantage of others' hesitancy.

This was something that pedestrian Victoria also noted.

"It kind of goes from one extreme to the other, you've either got people hurtling through it not stopping or everybody stopping and nobody quite sure who is to go first," she said.

She said the design was a "nice idea in theory" but, in reality, there was too much confusion about what the rules were.

She had to stop as she was telling me about the near-misses she had seen there because a van nearly collided with a car behind us.

Another pedestrian, Samuel, agreed the roundabout was unsafe because people did not know when they had priority.

"People don't know when to stop, who should go first, it's terrible," he said.

"You stand here and you watch what these people are doing and how they're driving, it's horrendous. It's dangerous."

But others disagreed.

Local resident Lynn told the BBC she thought the work was a "great improvement".

"I really don't know what all the fuss is about," she said.

"I think they've done a great job."

Wokingham Borough Council's executive member for transport, Martin Alder, said the aim of the design was to slow down traffic and make drivers more aware of pedestrians.

From my experience, at least, it does appear to have done this, at least in some cases.

The council said there was not space for a traditional junction.

Mr Alder said guidance from the Department for Transport (DfT) said imaginative road designs - for example, the nautical road decorations in Poole or multicoloured spots in Colchester - "can be very safe".

So, is the junction here to stay?

Some local residents think it shouldn't be, at least in its current form.

"I would like to think they could make it better," said Victoria.

"Even if they just turned the white leaves into zebra crossings, everybody knows what a zebra crossing is."

And Samuel said he thought it should be redesigned again.

"It's a hazard," he said.

Even with the petition against the design hitting 1,400 signatures, it would appear the junction is destined to stay as it is, certainly for now.

The council said there are currently no plans to change it but did say the roundabouts would be continually monitored.

While it would appear the design is here to stay for the foreseeable, perhaps both sides of the debate will intersect again before too long.

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