What happens when traffic lights disappear? That depends. A fascinating recent study for the Greater London Authority found that if they were removed from a four-way junction in East Barnet, North London, traffic would move more quickly and the economy would benefit by £12,000 a year. But if snuffed out on west London's Target roundabout, vehicle flow would worsen during most parts of the day and wealth creation would go into reverse to the alarming tune of an annual £800,000. Conclusion? Removing road traffic signals might be helpful in some cases in some ways. But would it be helpful to everyone? The researchers were candid on this point:
The analysis undertaken does not take into account the benefits and disbenefits to pedestrians. This is largely due to a lack of data but also from the lack of validated methods of forecasting and modelling pedestrian behaviour when traffic signals are not in use.
Perturbing, don't you think? Huge debates rage, especially in the capital, about transport policy. Mountains of money are spent. Action and reaction over trains and buses, bicycles and cars proliferate. Pedestrians aren't totally forgotten: campaigners in my east London neighbourhood have lately been rewarded by Transport for London with plans for improving our local main road artery which include – at long last – eliminating what I call "the killer crossing". Even so, they appear largely invisible. I certainly feel that way each time a trip to the chip shop or dry cleaner involves clinging to a tiny, ravaged traffic island, often with children at my side, as the beasts of internal combustion roar on all sides.
I'm not a car-hater: I've no idea how the things work, but I enjoy driving mine outside of town. Yet I think we lose perspective on quite how they, and vans and lorries, dominate urban terrain. The planning history of any town or city tells a tale of obliging municipal accommodation of their rise and rise, with thoroughfares widened, parking provision made and everything else expected to give way. There are all sorts of good reasons, social and economic, why that's been so. But the motoring lobby's howls against any attempt to control the downside of the car's success demonstrates how decades of having things your own way can foster presumptuousness. Meanwhile, the urban walker stands at the zebra crossing dependent on the motorist's goodwill – and even that, if my own experience is anything to go by, seems to be in decreasing supply.
Here are some useful facts. There are 2,244 signalled junctions in Greater London that include pedestrian crossing facilities, and 2,477 "stand alone" pedestrian crossings that have lights. Eleven percent of all signalled crossings lack either bleeping noises or tactile aids, which make them less safe for blind or partially sighted people. At the last count around 400 did not comply with the Department for Transport's most recent design standards, which TfL adopts, though work on correcting this seems to have accelerated in recent months.
These stats have been unearthed thanks largely to the persistence of London Assembly Liberal Democrat Caroline Pidgeon, who also chairs the assembly's transport committee. She has remorselessly pursued the issue of road-crossing safety with TfL and Boris Johnson, and I'm grateful to one of her press office colleagues for bringing the fruits of her labours to my attention so comprehensively.
Tomorrow the Christmas shopping heart of the West End – Oxford Street, Bond Street and Regent Street – will be made entirely traffic free in deference to VIPs – Very Important Pedestrians, as it says here. Be there for just a flavour of how a walking-friendlier capital might feel.