Criteria for pedestrian crossings

In 2009, the Association of Directors of Environment, Economy, Planning and Transport
(ADEPT) commissioned the Centre for Transport Studies at UCL to investigate the approaches used by local authorities in Britain to support decisions on the location and design of facilities for pedestrians to cross roads, and to produce a report on the findings. The study was undertaken by designing, running and analysing the results of a self-completion web-based questionnaire survey on current practice. All members of the ADEPT Traffic Systems Working Group (TSG), who are British local authority officers, were invited to respond with no more than one respondent from each local authority.

The scope of this study was the various approaches in current use to help investigate sites for installation of pedestrian crossing facilities and to assess the suitability of different kinds of pedestrian crossings. The range of facilities considered includes the formal signal controlled crossing types of pelican, puffin and toucan, the formal uncontrolled zebra crossing, and beyond that, informal crossing facilities.

This research aims to describe a common assessment framework for investigating requests
for formal pedestrian crossings by seeking to identify a consensus among local authorities on factors considered when determining places where a formal crossing is appropriate. One of the principal objectives of describing a common assessment framework for formal pedestrian crossings is to identify a range of options for use at sites where a formal crossing may not be appropriate, so that local authority engineers can demonstrate how a decision is reached.