London mayor Boris Johnson has unveiled a new X-shaped pedestrian crossing at Oxford Circus, following the completion of a £5m scheme to reduce overcrowding.

Tourists and shoppers will now have the chance to cross the junction in a diagonal direction in addition to the traditional straight ahead method as part of a design modelled on Tokyo's Shibuya crossing in Japan.

It is hoped that the redesign of the junction where Regent Street meets Oxford Street, as well as the removal of barriers and street clutter, will double the amount of pedestrians able to cross.

Jointly funded by the Crown Estate and Transport for London, the £5m scheme forms part of the Crown Estate's plans for a £750m regeneration of Regent Street and Westminster City Council's £40m plans to revamp the West End ahead of the London 2012 Olympics.

Johnson said: "This project is a triumph for British engineering, Japanese innovation and good old fashioned common sense. The head scratching frustration caused by the previous design is over and we've brought one of the world's greatest crossroads into the twenty first century.

"Being able to cross in an oblique rather than a perpendicular fashion will make Oxford Circus incredibly more efficient for the millions of pedestrians and road users that use the crossing every year."

The scheme took six months to complete and will complement plans to widen pavements along a 0.5km (0.3-mile) stretch of both Regent Street and Oxford Street.