Credit: The Local Germany
Experts at Friends of the Earth Germany (BUND) are fed up with the traffic light system in the capital and have admonished the city government for failing to get it right despite numerous attempts, local paper Tagesspiegel reported.
Waiting for up to four minutes for the green is now the norm for people in parts of the city, who when they eventually begin striding to the other side of a wide road, and frequently find themselves stranded on the little island in the middle.
That is, of course, if they manage to avoid cars turning left into the crossing – something tourists often fail to realise is allowed in Germany.
The combination of long waiting times, being crammed onto a tiny, risen patch of concrete in between zooming cars and running over the road all make pedestrian life dangerous in Berlin, Martin Schlegel from BUND told the Tagesspiegel on Tuesday.
Schlegel can list lots of places in the city which are particularly risky for people on foot, some where the green man flashes for less than three seconds, forcing pedestrians into a sprint to the other side.