"She told me to walk this way.."

A council is introducing the equivalent of lollipop ladies for adults to help ease congestion in a busy town centre.

Say what..?

Nottingham City Council is to appoint two "zebra crossing marshals" to control pedestrians and keep traffic flowing.

They are to be posted at the busiest crossing in the city at lunchtime six days a week.

However unlike lollipop ladies, the marshals' task will be to regulate pedestrians rather than the traffic.

Ummm...

The plans have been drawn up to prevent gridlock in the heart of the city, because buses face repeated delays because of difficulties finding a gap in the flow of shoppers.

Each paddle will be emblazoned with the slogan "please wait for buses to pass" and shoppers will be expected to wait behind the marshal until it is considered safe to cross the road again.

So, let me get this straight: buses are having problems because there's a zebra crossing where there should really be a pelican crossing, and your solution is to add to the council's payroll rather than replace the crossing?

Fantastic! Why not? It's only taxpayer's money, after all.

Just one question: how are you going to make this work, since as far as I'm aware, these people will have no power to compel the public to obey them?

Have you thought of that?

Oh. You have:

"The marshals won't be able to stop anybody; they will be there in an advisory capacity," said Andy Gibbons, the city's public transport manager.

Let's hope enough people tell them where to shove their advice then. They certainly will if they realise that they are paying for two more leeches on the public tit.

Nottingham's latest proposals puzzled an AA spokesman. "It's a traffic management problem, there is clearly a measure of bad design and there is too much going on at the same place," he said.

"You can hardly blame the pedestrian for wanting to cross the road. Perhaps they could be more radical and follow what happens in some American cities and give people tickets for jaywalking."

Wow, I'll say he was 'puzzled'. While he's quite right that this is a problem of bad design, you can't give someone a ticket for jaywalking on a legal pedestrian crossing!

Has the world gone mad?

Update: Manwiddecombe asks the same question.