To help celebrate this year’s Brighton Pride and the 50th anniversary of the modern LGBT+ rights movement, Siemens Mobility has replaced some of the green pedestrian signals along the parade route with a range of diversity images.
Four special designs have been created to represent different and diverse relationships, using the widely recognised gender symbols. Inspired by a similar set of pedestrian signals that was produced for London Pride, and subsequently adopted by other Pride festivals, these unique signals were produced by Siemens Mobility to help demonstrate Brighton and Hove’s support for LGBT+ diversity.
Siemens Mobility has changed 10 of the traditional ‘green man’ signals to different diversity symbols, with these remaining in place for the duration of the three-day festival. The signals being changed can be seen at Russell Road, Brunswick and London Baker.
Chair of the Environment, Transport and Sustainability Committee at Brighton & Hove City Council, Councillor Anne Pissaridou, said: “We are delighted to support this initiative by Siemens Mobility to promote the diversity symbol on the city’s traffic controls over the Pride weekend. Brighton & Hove is home to the biggest Pride event in the UK and we are very proud to host the annual parade and festival event in the city each year. This is a simple but effective way of celebrating diversity and supporting the LGBT community.”
Wilke Reints, Managing Director of Siemens Mobility’s Intelligent Traffic Systems business in the UK said: “Diversity and inclusivity is very important to us and our employees, and this is a great example of a simple idea having a major impact. It is one that was first introduced in London in 2016 and since then has gone from strength to strength.
“For the 2019 celebrations, we’ve worked with local authorities in six cities UK-wide to ensure more diversity symbols are on display than ever before to help raise awareness of LGBT+ issues.”
He concluded: “We are proud to show our support for Brighton Pride in a fun and engaging way by working with Brighton and Hove City Council to use the new symbols on traffic controls in the city.”
Siemens Mobility has installed the new traffic signals in Brighton at its own cost.
