Every morning, more than 800 Mt Victoria residents jay-walk to work across Kent and Cambridge Terraces - more than half of them between Elizabeth Street and Majoribanks Street, where they can be seen weaving between traffic as they make their way to Courtenay Place.

The reason they're weaving through the traffic is that the Council's traffic engineers have been refusing to provide a safe and convenient crossing point for literally decades, as they simply don't think pedestrians are worth the effort. And this anti-pedestrian bias has now been extended to Wellington's most dangerous intersection, where Courtenay Place meets Taranaki Street. In the last few days, the Council's engineers have begun tearing up the traffic islands that thousands of pedestrians use as a refuge as they cross five lanes of traffic, because they will interfere with the smooth flow of cars - never mind that pedestrians typically outnumber vehicles on this intersection.

Pedestrians are more in danger on the Taranaki Street intersection due to the Council decision to remove the safety of the traffic islands.

This anti-pedestrian bigotry is in direct contrast to the Council's own stated policies. Many of the plans the Council has developed over the last few years - from the walking policy to the climate change action plan to the Ngauranga to Airport Corridor Plan - emphasise the need to encourage "active modes", otherwise known as walking and cycling. Yet the moment the traffic engineers get involved, pedestrian crossings are removed, traffic light phasing stacked in favour of cars, more parking added ... it's a litany of Council hypocrisy.

It's high time the Council's traffic engineers joined the rest of us in the 21st Century. As a regular pedestrian (and driver), I'm tired of being regarded as an inconvenience to be kept out of the way of the terribly important car traffic when I'm walking around town. There's no economic, social or environmental justification for the anti-pedestrian biases of the traffic engineers, so ithey need to drop their neanderthal approach to traffic management.

And it's also high time they started listening to ratepayers on this issue. The Mt Victoria Residents Association has been asking for pedestrian improvements across Kent and Cambridge Terraces for years - and so far we've seen nothing but the sort of bureaucratic dithering that would make the Zimbabwean Civil Service blush with embarrassment. And in the latest fiasco, the Council began making the Taranaki Street intersection more dangerous before consultation on the changes had even closed! If the traffic engineers were attempting to send the message that they really don't give a toss what ratepayers think, they've succeeded admirably. And frankly, that's not good enough.