Colourful Crossings are artworks installed on the surface of the carriageway (road) area of signal controlled crossings. Transport for London (TfL) had been working with London local authorities and cultural organisations to install them since 2015. TfL received some concerns about potential negative accessibility impacts and waned to better understand these, so commissioned us to conduct a small exploratory piece of research which consisted of interviews with disabled people likely to be negatively affected by Colourful Crossings and people in organisations responsible for commissioning them. Our 2021 report included insights from these interviews and sketch ideas of ways the objectives of Colourful Crossings could be met without negatively impacting street accessibility.
This research let TfL to publish a tender for a more extensive piece of research, including a formal literature review, which we bid for in partnership with neuro-diversity researcher Dr Katie Gaudion, and were awarded. This led to us producing two further reports, a 13,000 word literature review in early 2023 and report on interviews with key stakeholders in early 2024. Our conclusions from this final report are reproduced below:
• Interviewees from organisations representing disabled people explained in detail the ways in which Colourful Crossings negatively impact disabled people and the processes through which the organisations came to be aware of these effects. Whilst, outside of this project, testimony has not been systematically collected, many of these effects are consistent with themes identified in the literature, in particular on sensory preferences, consistency in environments, the effect of flooring surfaces, and visual factors that affect people’s ability to maintain headings whilst crossing roads.
• Most of the benefits of Colourful Crossings identified by organisations involved with installing them, such as encouraging people to visit and dwell in an area, exposing people to artwork or expressing solidarity with a particular group, are not tied specifically to artworks located on the crossing area and most could be met by artistic interventions sited somewhere else (less safety-critical) in the streetscape. Interviewees from organisations involved with installing Colourful Crossings emphasised that success against these objectives can be difficult to quantify.
• The only benefit tied specifically to the location of an artwork on the crossing area, rather than the streetscape more generally, was ‘4.1.2 Highlighting crossings for way-finding or to change pedestrian behaviour’. Through the stakeholder interview process two evaluations of Colourful Crossings have been identified (Better Bankside, 2017 and Living Streets, 2019). Both of these attempted, through on-street surveys before and after installation, to measure an effect on pedestrian behaviour, but neither contain robust evidence that Colourful Crossings have any effect on this. Better Bankside, 2017 did report a reduction in reported satisfaction with “Safety” and an increase in respondents describing their behaviour as “Cautious” or “Very Cautious” after the installation but no interviewees appear to have been aware of these results.
• Most interviewees from organisations involved in installing Colourful Crossings felt that guidance on their design that could mitigate their impact on disabled people, would also prevent them meeting their objectives as artworks and public realm interventions.
• Many interviewees from organisations involved in installing Colourful Crossings are very keen to install artworks in other areas of the streetscape. Some feel that, due to their proliferation, Colourful Crossings no longer serve what interviewees see as their primary purpose, of generating excitement through novelty and encouraging people to visit an area.
• Interviewees from organisations representing disabled people emphasised that artworks elsewhere in the streetscape could still negatively affect disabled people and so should be deployed with consideration. TFA are working on a project in this area due for release in 2024.
• The fact that Colourful Crossings represent a readily replicable, almost ‘off the shelf’ intervention, which is quick to install, well defined in terms of size and cost, and has a precedent in terms of regulatory and ‘safety’ approval has been, according to some interviewees, a key driver of their popularity with organisations involved with installing them.
• Some interviewees pointed out that there are other streetscape elements and structures that are fairly standardised across London and could host artistic interventions that are similarly readily replicable and defined in size and cost. A pro-active process could be undertaken to identify these elements and structures, establish how they could be activated with artwork and check that this will not negatively affect disabled people. Successful combinations of element or structure and activation could then be offered to organisations involved in installing Colourful Crossings in much the same way Colourful Crossings have been deployed, but with more novelty and less of a negative impact on disabled people.
In response to our research and ongoing feedback from groups representing disabled people TfL confirmed later in 2024 that Colourful Crossings would be banned in London and existing examples would be removed. No plans have been announced to look for other potentially replicable sites for installations of artworks in London’s streetscape.