TheDepartment for Transport is coming under pressure to allow temporary traffic signals to be provided for pedestrians to address what Westminster City Council says is ‘a major safety issue’.
Local highway authorities are unable to provide any crossing facilities for pedestrians whenever traffic signals are out of service, which Martin Low, director of transportation at Westminster, said was dangerous in an area with 1M pedestrian visitors daily.
The DfT has not provided a specification necessary for companies interested in developing suitable temporary signals to produce the equipment, despite Westminster having raised the issue for three years.
Low, who highlighted the issue at an Institution of Highways and Transportation conference last week, told Surveyor afterwards that ‘the industry sometimes forgets that Parliament clearly stated that the duty to keep traffic moving should also cover pedestrian movements’.
He urged DfT civil servants to ‘not be too red-tape-ish about the requirements for these temporary signals, such as the clearance height, given that the facilities currently used for vehicles are relatively low’.
The ‘many thousands’ of pedestrians using busy junctions in central London, such as Oxford Circus, ‘needed to be able to move about efficiently and safely, day in, day out,’ Low stressed.
The DfT had itself asked local authority traffic managers ‘to focus on all modes’.
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