Why The California Cross Junction Has Divided Finchampstead

grey placeholder — California Cross roundabout has been the subject of controversy since its redesign in 2024

BBC An aerial photo of two roundabouts, with rainbow leaves painted on the tarmac. At each of the the three exists for each roundabout there's a band of white leaves painted across the road. — California Cross roundabout has been the subject of controversy since its redesign in 2024

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.

A photo taken from the pavement showing one of the roundabouts, with the white leaf crossing on the right and the rainbow leaf roundabout on the left. It's a sunny day and the sky is blue. — The redesign was part of a water project to revamp the junction

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.

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Cars driving across one of the rainbow leaf roundabouts. — Residents have voiced concerns that motorists do not know who has priority at the junction

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.

‘Near-misses’

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.

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“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.”

Google A screenshot from Google street view showing what the area used to look like. There's a mini roundabout with a white painted island in the middle. There are no crossings at the exits, just gaps in the yellow pavement railings suggesting people can cross there. — Some argue the junction is an improvement on the original

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”.