"Guy Bentham" guybentham at tiscali co uk wrote in message ...

There is an inconsistency in layout, which makes it clearly evident that
there is no standard design for pedestrian crossings. The changing design
layout, the lack of pedestrian lights, the lack of clearly marked pedestrian
crossings, the appearance of push buttons at some crossings, the use of
pedestrian subways or sky walks, the extensive use of guard railings -
everything is part of an undeveloped traffic culture, where pedestrians are
very poorly accommodated. The focus has been on vehicular traffic and ways
of facilitating car movements, so that pedestrians have gradually become a
category of secondary city users who face many hardships and experience both
great difficulties and real danger when choosing to walk in the city.

Well, I'd agree with that.

Quite so - but TfL are paying attention to "best practice" (ugh) in
other cities (IMHO, the French are particularly good at attractive
street furniture, surfaces and so on, and some of the streetscape
improvements in the City could easily have come straight from a French
city). Have a look at the pdfs on this page:

http://www.tfl.gov.uk/streets/street...guidance.shtml

particularly the sections dealing with pedestrian crossings.