A new academic session has started, but old familiar worries about safe routes to school are troubling locals.
There are three areas of concern.
The first is on East London Street where customers returning rented cars to Avis after closing time in the evening often park on the pavement. By the time children and their parents are walking to school from the Annandale Street direction in the morning, before Avis opens up, the cars are still there and pedestrians must step into the road to get around them. Dangerous at the best of times, but doubly so when diversions have increased traffic along this road.
This is not a new problem. Locals have been complaining about the practice for years, but always come up against two apparently insuperable problems. First, the behaviour of unsupervised customers (who may not even realise that there is a primary school nearby). Second, the fact that Avis own the section of pavement outside their premises and are actually entitled to park on it.
In the autumn of 2008, the manager at what was then Europcar tried to prevent parking here by installing a thick wooden railway sleeper. However, City officials considered it a trip hazard and forced its removal 'in the interests of pedestrian safety'. In November of that year (Issue 164), City Centre Neighbourhood Manager Jenni Martin told the Spurtle: ‘We are actively addressing concerns [about this area] and looking into possible long-term solutions. These include: forming a full-height kerb and footway, installing bollards or creating an extra parking space or lay-by for loading.' No such solutions materialised.
The next area of concern is again on East London Street (above), where a minority of parents in cars are double-parking or ignoring double-yellow lines and zigzags close to St Mary's Primary School at drop-off and pick-up times. Their actions obscure sight-lines, involve children entering and exiting cars close to the road, and cause other vehicles to take rather unpredictable evasive action.
Spurtle sources say some of the same parents are among those parking similarly in the third area of concern on Bellevue Place (below) outside Drummond Community High School. Again, the issue of obscured sight-lines – particularly for primary school children who are unable to see over or around vehicles when crossing the road – is a particular worry.
Apparently, parking attendants have frequently been alerted to the issue, but are unable or unwilling to get involved. Police were alerted to the issue earlier in the year, and promised a crackdown. But it seems the message either failed to get through or has been forgotten.
Spurtle recommends worried parents contact their local councillors and raise the subject once more at the New Town and Broughton Community Council's next meeting on Monday 3 September.
