Beg buttons are the worst. Traffic engineers who design them into any but the most remote intersections should be ashamed of themselves. One more piece of obscene car culture and dependence.
Our cities have way over optimized for traffic flow of cars.
Edit: Also, I think crosswalks should be signalized away from intersections with level crossing and dedicated walking paths separate from road noise/pollution. Making people cross at an intersection is way too dangerous.
Meanwhile, I have not seen this behavior anywhere else in the city where it would make sense. Instead, we have almost all crosswalk buttons that do nothing, a few that turn on a light so drivers can know you want to cross (they won't stop, but they'll know), and a few where you will never have a walk signal unless you hit the button, but the light timing does not change. I have watched plenty of tourists helplessly trapped at an intersection not knowing why it never changes.
0: trains which cannot stop 1: emergency vehicles working a current emergency (when an emergency is not in progress they are 5) 2: pedestrians on foot (including manual wheelchairs) 3: buses in a bus-only lane 4: bicycles and other human powered wheeled transport (ebike count only if most power comes from humans). This includes electric wheelchairs. 5: everything else. Including buses in mixed traffic (which should only be done when traffic is so light that it doesn't matter)
This encourages the type of transport you want people to use in your city.
Suburban intersections really need them and I wouldn't consider them 'the most remote' ... the intersections are large enough that most people can't or won't cross on a minimum length green, so the button lengthens the green time. Additionally, traffic patterns vary, and waiting for a car to trigger the occupancy signal might be a longer wait, and anyway to encourage pedestrianism (false positives from people jumping out of cars isn't that big of a deal in the scheme of things either), the beg button often reduces cycle times to minimums until the pedestrian can cross. The alternative of including pedestrians in all cycles by default is a waste of everyone's time, including pedestrians, given the low pedestrian usage.
Maybe if there was a good way to measure pedestrians on approach and intersection entrance, you could do the same thing you do for cars, and cycle in advance of their arrival and confirm they cleared the intersection before cycling further, but that's asking for a lot.
In remote intersections, you only really need a button if there's significant traffic. Otherwise, crossing whenever there's a clearing is probably better, IMHO. But a button for slow crossers isn't a bad idea.
That's only safe if there are a reasonable number of lanes, namely no more than 2. Beyond that the width is higher, the possibility of a car far away blocking the view of another car slightly behind increases and the driving speed of the cars is increased because it feels safe enough for them. And from what I've seen in the West Coast, narrow human-sized roads are reserved exclusively for back alleys.