The Pelican Crossing was fast to establish itself across Britain as the pedestrian crossing of choice. It goes without saying that its name, despite the misgivings of the civil servants who coined it, was embraced by the public and has now virtually replaced all other terms for "pedestrian crossing" except for the Zebra. More modern variants of the traffic signal crossing like the Puffin or Toucan might have their own clever bird names, but to the British public they will probably always remain Pelicans, like it or not.
The Pelican had been intended to use the new-style Mellor signal heads, designed to provide a sleek, new design for signals across the country and due to launch in 1969. Unfortunately they weren't ready until late 1970 due to problems with the new design and so the very first Pelicans — some 700 of them, according to some reports — were installed using older-style SGE signal heads and X-way style rectangular pedestrian signals. They were converted, at enormous cost, in 1973.
The irony, of course, is that the Pelican had taken several stages of lengthy and expensive development and a well-publicised launch to create something that had already existed thirty years before. After just a few years of refinement, Forest City's 1930s crossings had quickly established that the best way to do things was a conventional set of signals for traffic and a two-light signal for pedestrians. The Pelican crossing was the result of more than a quarter of a century of meddling, in which time the only lasting innovations were that the pedestrian signals became a red and green man and the flashing amber phase was perfected. The government heralded the Pelican as something new and innovative. It wasn't.
