Once in a while I have to travel to one of the other districts of the city I live in, and I'm reminded that I happen to live in the district which once had tram lines, and you can really tell. My friend moved his young family further out, rationalising that young kids need more outdoor space (their new house is physically smaller, but in an area with woodland) and he didn't like his old neighbourhood (students, drug addicts), but every time I visit the first thing I have to do is risk my life, crossing a busy road with no pedestrian crossings, because everybody there (including them) drives everywhere.
For a while the nice people I buy pizza from owned a restaurant (they began, and now continue, as a food truck, wood burning oven inside a converted vehicle) and it too was in a district that was converted to car-focused urban living in the 1970s or so. That time I at least discovered an intersection with a crossing, albeit low priority (ie arrive, press button, wait 2-3 minutes to cross) and their restaurant faced the river so that's quiet.
I tend to think of the whole city as being like where I live -- rat runs diverted to a few arteries, heavy use of mandatory (Zebra or sometimes Puffin) crossings with moderate urgency for pedestrians or where I work (the city refused permission to close the road through our university, but authorised speed bumps and four very high urgency Puffins, so in effect it's faster to drive around it even though the road exists straight through it) -- but that's actually not true which is sad. I know where our existing MP lives, it's near me, I wonder where the next one (well, the candidate from the same party who will stand next time) lives ?
Amazing amount of effort spent on preventing the occasional superfluous vehicle stop when the pedestrian is gone for some reason. Would be surprised if the sensors did not raise a lot of false negatives for pedestrian presence, forcing them to keep begging at the knob?
I wonder what drivers would have to say to lights that are always red unless they press some button and wait?
Pedestrians stop being there like all the time. Typically they cross on red, either because they saw a gap (and there's no law requiring them to wait, just politeness) or else they risked it anyway because they were impatient. Having crossed, the pedestrian no longer needs the lights so unless there's a pedestrian cycle anyway (as there may be at a junction) it should be elided.
I've literally never had to "keep begging". I believe them that the sensors exist, but the event you seem to think would happen frequently has never occurred in my experience.
I've met in southern France car sensors - a metal plate on the road making the equivalent pedestrian crossing request button. As a tourist you had to be told about it.
All London's crossings, which tourists are more likely to be familiar with, are Pelicans, although sometimes modified with countdown timers in busy areas.
London doesn't use Puffins by policy, I'm not sure exactly why - in very high density areas I can see that the Puffin features aren't helpful, but that doesn't explain a full policy.
[Differences: A Puffin's cross/ don't cross indication is local, your side of the road, next to the button and angled such that you're looking at oncoming nearside traffic as well as the indicator; whereas a Pelican has indication atop a post on the far side of the road. The timers work differently meaning Puffins can react faster if unused for a period and then called, initiating a walk cycle very quickly in this case if able; if you're road traffic the difference is that Pelicans use flashing amber and Puffins never do IIRC]
There are definitely puffin crossings in London. But I think you're right - central London tends to have pelicans. The policy must not apply throughout greater London though.
Sometimes in the west end you'll have a hundred people waiting to cross - higher pedestrian signals on the other side of the road are probably more visible to everyone in that situation. And I guess it's helpful if crossings are consistent in an area: particularly in areas with lots of visitors.
To be fair, if huge numbers of people want to cross, it's actually mere politeness which keeps them from just doing it. If you just walk into a busy street, you'd perhaps be hit by a car and injured or killed, but, if a hundred people do it the cars are forced to stop by the literal weight of the obstacles.
I remember thinking about this on my way back from a London fireworks display (Richmond maybe? Somewhere that way) because obviously an entire crowd of thousands want to cross a street suddenly and they're not going to politely queue up and wait for light changes, they just all cross, because there's nothing car drivers can do about it. A few minutes away, with the crowds dispersed, it was necessary to actually use crossings, but outside the park where thousands of people had just watched the display a crossing was completely superfluous.
For a while the nice people I buy pizza from owned a restaurant (they began, and now continue, as a food truck, wood burning oven inside a converted vehicle) and it too was in a district that was converted to car-focused urban living in the 1970s or so. That time I at least discovered an intersection with a crossing, albeit low priority (ie arrive, press button, wait 2-3 minutes to cross) and their restaurant faced the river so that's quiet.
I tend to think of the whole city as being like where I live -- rat runs diverted to a few arteries, heavy use of mandatory (Zebra or sometimes Puffin) crossings with moderate urgency for pedestrians or where I work (the city refused permission to close the road through our university, but authorised speed bumps and four very high urgency Puffins, so in effect it's faster to drive around it even though the road exists straight through it) -- but that's actually not true which is sad. I know where our existing MP lives, it's near me, I wonder where the next one (well, the candidate from the same party who will stand next time) lives ?