Being one of the main routes into school, Ladygate Lane and is an extremely busy road with a high concentration of young children. Few cars ever stop for the children crossing as the drivers are mostly parents with tunnel vision who only have one aim, and that is to get their children to school on time or people rushing to get to work on time. What makes it a particularly dangerous road is that most drivers do not adhere to the 20-mph speed limit, which changes from a 30-mph zone. The risk of injury increases exponentially with impact speed. A crash at 30-mph has twice as much energy and destructive potential as a crash at 20-mph. At the point where most of the school children cross the road is a 30-mph zone, exactly where we are proposing to have a pedestrian crossing (see photos attached). Over the years I have witnessed countless near misses and my son and I have been victim to a couple ourselves. Driving around the borough I have noticed that Whiteheath Junior is one of the few schools, if not the only school, which does not have a pedestrian crossing nearby to enable children to get to school on time, and above all, safely. Why wait until a serious traffic incident occurs.
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ADDITIONAL INFORMATION PROVIDED:
Ruislip has become a very densely populated area and looking at the number of cars on the road compared to when I first moved to Ruislip in 2000, traffic and congestion has increased tenfold, especially during the school run. Most parents I speak to choose to take their children to school by car as they feel it is too dangerous to walk or cycle to school and having been the victim of 2 near misses myself, I cannot say I blame them.
Other reasons why having a pedestrian crossing in front of every school is imperative:
- A generation ago, 70% of primary school children walked to school but this has dropped to just over half (51%).
- The government has a target in its Cycling and Walking
Investment Strategy (CWIS) to have 55% of primary school children
walking to
school by 2025.
- A quarter of all car journeys in the UK are under ONE
mile.
-For 5–10-year-olds the average trip length to school is 1.5
miles.
- During morning peak traffic times, 1 in 4 cars on the road are taking children school.
- The UK school run alone is responsible for generating half a million tons of CO2 per year — more than some small countries.
- A study of air pollution in London found children growing up nearest to busy roads had reduced lung volume, a loss of approximately five per cent in lung capacity — compared to those in less polluted areas. And this isn’t just a London problem — that goes for anywhere with busy traffic.
- Every month 1,200 children are injured in traffic related collisions that happen within 500m of a school.
Some existing ideas/initiatives/schemes on how to get the ball rolling:
-Does our council have a walking to school target or strategy? We could align to and ultimately help the council achieve this target/strategy.
- Does the borough of Hillingdon have an air pollution target or strategy? Again, if a pedestrian crossing encourages more parents and children out of their cars and walk and cycle to school, this will help in bringing down the current extremely high pollution we see in London and surrounding boroughs.
- On behalf of the parents at our school, I am happy to offer to help fundraise for a new crossing.
- There seems to be a lot of development in our area, such as new housing developments, I would like to ask the council about ‘Section 106 development money’ — this is S106 of the Town and Country Planning Act that takes contributions from private developers towards the costs of providing community and social infrastructure. From what I understand most councils have a pot of this money, and a school crossing is ideal ‘community and social infrastructure’.
- HS2 has been directly responsible for a sharp increase in HGVs
in our area and traffic in general, so circling back to the
previous point – how about HS2 ‘give back’ to the
community by providing funding to have the pedestrian crossing
built in one of the larger junior schools in our borough?
This ePetition runs from 16/04/2024 to 15/05/2024.
31 people have signed this ePetition.