“Give us Time to Cross,” say campaigners. Pic: Man Vyi

The amount of time for pedestrian’s to cross the road in Tower Hamlets has been cut at sites across the borough as the injuries and fatalies at those intersections increase.

According to data published by Transport for London this week, the “green man” time, the amount of seconds that pedestrian’s get to cross an intersection safely, has been decreased at 19 sites across Tower Hamlets while the borough has seen a 21 per cent rise in injuries or fatalities at such intersections.

Some crossings now give pedestrians just six seconds to get across.

Valeria Shawcross, the London Assembly member for Lambeth and Southwark who chairs the transportation committee, said that the increase was a “great concern.”

“It reverses more than a decade of improved casualty rates and we would expect TfL to be taking a proactive approach to building an evidence base to explain this worrying trend.”

Transport for London, however, doesn’t see the decrease as troubling. A spokesperson for the organization said that, in most cases, the time had only been reduced by one or two seconds and that there was still enough ‘blackout’ time for people to cross safely.

The spokesperson said: “We continue to monitor all roads across London to ensure that they remain as safe as possible for all road users and the long-term trend in a reduction of pedestrian KSIs shows that we continue to build on the solid progress made by TfL, London’s boroughs and the police to make our roads safer for all.”

Last year, elderly Londoners joined the Westminster Living Streets Group, launching a week long campaign in November called ‘Give us Time to Cross’ which was aimed at getting Boris Johnson to extend crossing time. A study from June 2012 had showed that 4 out of 5 old people in the capital were unable to cross the road before the light changed.