Safe Speed Forums

From to-nights Nottm Eve Post:

Parents who park on the zigzag lines outside schools face £60 fines from Monday.

Until now, the yellow or white markings were not enforced.

Drivers could be penalised for parking on them if they were causing an obstruction, but there was not enough manpower to fully police them.

But this often led to congested roads at the beginning and end of the school day. So city council parking attendants are now to target "selfish and dangerous" parents blocking school entrances.

Anyone parking on zigzag lines from 8.30 to 9.30am and 2 to 4pm will get the same £60 penalty as for waiting on double yellow lines.

The council is promising a "vigorous" campaign to keep the zigzag lines clear.

The lines are there to protect children, it says, giving them a clear area to see whether it is safe to cross the road - and making it easier for drivers to see them.

It's hoped the anti-congestion campaign will encourage parents to park further away from the school, or even walk or use public transport.

Coun Brian Grocock, city council transport spokesman, said: "There has never been a justification for people ignoring the zigzags.

"Children are placed in unnecessary danger by the very people who should be doing all they can to protect them, parents. We intend to use our enforcement powers vigorously."

Notices have been sent through schools to warn parents about the zigzags campaign.




This is welcome news but long overdue.
I live next to one of the school entrances, and regularly get into 'parking rage' incidents Whatever next?

Anyone know if other areas are doing this?

As irresponsible parking has now become the 'norm' for many people outside of schools, I predict there will be much whinging and moaning when they start this clampdown.
In fact, this ties in with what Basingwerk said in Social Glue thread elsehwere in this forum. How ironic!

Parking outside schools is always a problem. Because parents are there for such a short period of time they just dump there cars anywhere. School entrances are favorite.

My wife used to be a "lolipop lady" Saw all sorts. Some parents use the car to take their kids 200 yds...

Also the problem with "thick" dads showing off in their XR4Is wheel spinning away after dropping the brats off,

Term time school run enforcement gets my vote.

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Speed camera policy Kills

It's usually Mothers In People Carriers with ONE Kid Better When Schools are Out, You can tell who causes all the Congestion then

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RoADA Member -GOLD 2008
If you don't know where you are going, any road will get you there.

Hang on a mo, exactly what are we saying here?

If there was just ONE mother with a people carrier, it wouldn't be a problem, would it? Nobody would notice. Or two, or three...
At what point does it become a problem?
Are we saying that those mothers should leave their people carriers at home, walk their children to school and be half an hour late for work as a consequence, just in case some other mothers have the same idea?
It's a bit like planning a quiet night at the local, only to find out when you get there that everybody else in the village had the same idea - they all thought, individually, that THEY were going to have a quiet night.
And if it's OK for a few, but not for many, then who decides, and how, which mothers should and which shouldn't? A quota system, perhaps? Except that I can't see that going down too well.

Regards
Peter

Mums shouldn't have to get to work at the same time as their kids have to get to skool

I haven't ever really driven past a school at "school run" time recently, but even in our small village it is apparently "chaos like you wouldn't imagine" in all the roads around the school. There is a narrow road leading up to the school but apparently they have now banned cars going up there because it was just crazy.

Bear in mind that this is a rich area and probably three quarters of the mothers don't work and live within a five minute walk. It now seems to be "hip" to send your children to a state school.

For comparison when I left there (1990) there was about the same number of children (a hundred) and maybe up to ten cars a day picking children up.

This is a genuine quote that my mum's friend said when stopping in where my mum works to pick up an order: "Oh, I'm in such a hurry, I've got to pick up <child> from school and then go for my squash lesson"

Gareth

Of course that could be the 6th drop-off of the day. Don't jump to conclusions.

A little off-topic, but try going through the Tyne tunnel at 8.30 on school days. Mile and a half queues. School hols? 2-300 yards.

Just two quick points, for what it's worth:

1) During school holidays a lot of parents are also on holiday - less cars travelling to work. I see a lot less traffic on the motorways between cities during holidays - this can't be down to the school run.

2) School opening times forces the traffic into a smaller time window. 1000 cars in the space of half an hour is a lot worse than that same thousand cars in the space of an hour.

Regards
Peter

And another quick point, also FWIW

Congestion happens quite suddenly when certain thresholds are exceeded. Flow breaks down. Sometimes 5% more traffic can mean 50% more congestion.

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Paul Smith
Our scrap speed cameras petition got over 28,000 sigs
The Safe Speed campaign demands a return to intelligent road safety

Absolutely right, a point most people are oblivious of when they park illegally outside a shop to 'pop in for two minutes'. The congestion that arises from this one small obstruction has been proven to take up to half and hour (or even longer) to clear given high traffic flow situations.

Gizmo wrote:

Tell me about it, the majority of kids at our school live only minutes/yards away, and still arrive by car!
I see it all the time, and some of the mums then congregate at the gates and gossip for up to an hour, so it's not as if they go to work.



Er, more like "thick" mums showing off in their hubbys XR4Is this way!

Derick wrote:

(My bold/italics)
SPOT ON !
I live next to one of five entrances to the school and at least five P/Cs (some with 'Bull Bars') block my passage... whoops,.....Driveway-pavement, and narrow the road outside my home regularly.
And, these are the 'gossips' who bring just one kiddie (+ the dog) with them.
Not a problem as such to me, cos I rarely leave home before 10-30 anyway.

Leaflets were handed out to parents earlier this week warning of the impending 'purge', but up to to-day, there's been no noticeable change in the "irresponsible parking", let's see how much "whinging and moaning when they start this clampdown" there will be!

True - we must not forget that thousands of teachers and lecturers are also hitting the road to get to work as well. So not just the mumpties!

Perhaps they should stagger the school day - open later and close later - and bosses could work this around flexi-hours or shifts?

Part of the problem is a desired school which is not necessarily the nearest one, and the average school kit weighs a ton. HE and woodwork day was unbelievable - especially if they had a Games/PE/ music class on the same day! I speak from experience of twins in Y8 in the past. (They are Y11 now). I also used to dread the HE class as that meant I had to eat whatever they'd made and pretend to enjoy it. What's worse - have more of this to come! Not kidding - the eldest used to stagger to the bus stop under all this weight and get stuck on the bus - where other kids were also struggling under all this weight!


Some schools do not provide desks and lockers - kids are lugging this stuff around. Could explain why the walk, cycle, bus to school is not an option sometimes. This is addition to family pressures and lifestyles as well.

As ranted previously the school my kids attend whacked up the school bus fee to what we considered extortionate - especially when we have so many of the "little dears". Wildy and self took turns before our eldest passed his test. Now we pack them all off with him and he is allowed to park in the school grounds. Find a lot of the sixth formers are taking siblings to school now since the hike on the school's bus service. Also they have encouraged mumpties and created a problem around there which did not exist before. Think they've realised this and the fee may go back to normal. Gather the service is running at loss as fewer are using it anyway!

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Yep. Let me add a little detail. During the 8 or 10 weeks of the school summer holidays around 10% of the wider working population are also on holiday on any given day or week.

It works like this: 50% of the working population take a summer holiday of 2 weeks within a 10 week window. => (50%*2)/10 = 10%

[edited for typo]

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Paul Smith
Our scrap speed cameras petition got over 28,000 sigs
The Safe Speed campaign demands a return to intelligent road safety

Come on, we had HE in my day, and I had a mile walk to the bus and half a mile the other end (when I didn't do the whole six miles by bike) and I always had all my kit and textbooks with me because swapping and changing depending on what class I had was a recipie for disaster. Had a few friends in the school brass band, one of them coped taking his trombone back and forth on foot/bus. It quite suprising how much a kid can carry with a little practice.


He he, my parents didn't have this problem, an added advantage of carting stuff around in a schoolbag all day meant it rarely got home in any kind of edible state.

It's all excuses as far as I am concerned and there is no need for it.

If a parent wants to take their kid to school by car then that is their choice. If they like to struggle to find a parking spot, mess around getting the kids in and out and in and out then that is up to them.

Those that cause an obstruction should be dealt with, but councils could do a lot more than they do when designing/planning/building/locating schools.

Take my local primary for instance, they have a lovely big bus turning circle in the grounds (only used by a bus once a week for the swimming lessons) which would be great for dropping off but some fool decided to make the only pavement access barely wide enough for 2 people to pass, which means inevitably some choose to walk on the road, which brings them into confict with the cars, so cars are banned from the grounds. Whic means the local access roads are clogged with parked cars.

Plus all the admin and ancilliary staff.

And don't forget that many people, especially women in the public services or temping/contracting, only work in term time and are off throughout the school holidays.

And then there are all the people who make small detours to drop off their kids on the way to work during term time or combine shopping trips, etc with the school run.

Whilst there are obvious problems with access/ parking/ safety/ congestion around schools in term time I think that the idea that congestion in general is "caused" by school run mums, and, more critically, can be "cured" by attacking that problem is a red herring.

If we want to get out of that pickle we have to address the underlying problems.

After all, if roads and parking were adequate for the school run there wouldn't be a congestion or parking problem.

Or am I missing something?

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What I don't understand is the need to drop the kids off at the school gates. Why not a few hundred yards away, but within a 'safe' walking distance? That way traffic would be spread more evenly around the surrounding streets, instead of creating a bottleneck at the school entrance.

Homer's and Bogush's posts really identify one aspect of the problem. As usual, car hating Councils do not provide safe parking/drop off areas to "discourage" car use. This, of course, does not work and leads to the chaos at peak times.

Most schools do not let parents into their car parks to drop off children. Why not? It must be fear of being sued if there were an accident on the premises so instead they leave the children in the road - not their problem if someone is run over.

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Malcolm W.
The views expressed in this post are personal opinions and do not represent the views of Safespeed.

This is exactly the reason given by the headmaster at our local school. How he can wash his hands of the extra danger he has created beyond the gates I do not know.

We walk my daughter to the school, not because I am on some eco ego trip, not because the council/headmaster make it inconvenient, but because I want to (I walk to work myself, where parking is not a problem, for the same reason). Sometimes we pick her up in the car, if we are going somewhere or are on our way back from somewhere.