Safe Speed Forums

For some time, the school run has been the cause of much congestion and has turned the area close to each school into a "no-go area" for residents at school run times. Here's a proposed solution:

Except for residents' access, ban vehicle movements near all schools for an hour either side of start and close times. In concert with this, create "drop and ride" schemes so that parents drop their offspring at designated pickup points and children are bussed through the exclusion zone. This will need some fine tuning - for example, where a school is close to a through route you'd need to allow traffic through but prevent stopping to drop off children.

Comments?

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Will

Yes. This thread is a spin off from a discussion about the issue. See: http://www.safespeed.org.uk/forum/viewtopic.php?t=7826

Willcove (and everyone), if you're spinning a new thread off from an existing one, it's always a good idea to provide a link to the original thread.

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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

Actually, I don't consider this thread to be a "spin off" from the other thread. The other thread talked about getting children to cycle to school. This topic is about "decentralising" the school run. There is but a tenuous link between the two, which is why I started a new topic rather than "hijacking" the other.

A little more on what I mean by "decentralising" the school run. Now, every car taking children to attend a particular school is headed for that school. If you had a number of designated drop off points from which the children would be bussed, then a smaller number of cars would converge at each drop off point than currently converge on the school itself. The worst school run congestion seems to occur close to the school itself, so this would remove that bottleneck from the school run.

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Will

Walk?

Good idea for those who live within walking distance. There just remains the issue of how to encourage them to do so!

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Will

Surely that’s a parental issue, and it depends on what distance you call local. When I used to walk to my secondary school it must have been a two mile round trip. My father had a car but we still had to walk.

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Useless laws weaken necessary laws.

We could just accept that people driving their children to school have as much right to be on the road as anyone else, and see it as a legitimate activity.

The solutions you propose are mereley creating new laws and criminals, and will only serve to worsen the situation. How much do you think it would cost to provide all the bussing needed? Perhaps that's a clue as to why it doesn't already happen.

What struck me about the idea of the school run is that a survey of how many children go to the school nearest them , and the reasons for them not doing this ,apart from the excuse that this school or that one is better - I would suspect that in a lot of cases in urban areas the amount of cross town traffic generated by this is great.

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lets bring sanity back to speed limits.
Drivers are like donkeys -they respond best to a carrot, not a stick .Road safety experts are like Asses - best kept covered up ,or sat on

We could, I suppose, continue with the daily gridlock. People driving their children to school do have as much right to be on the road as anyone else. However, those who live near the school should have a right to go about their lives without being denied access to their own houses twice a day - which is what is happening across the country.

I don't see how it would worsen the situation. Instead of one highly congested area in the immediate vicinity of the school, you would have several much less congested areas and what congestion remained would be in less sensitive locations.

WRT to the cost of bussing, I suspect it would be minimal. Most schools aready have busses so a couple of "round robbins" added to an existing contract shouldn't cost overly.

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Will

Is it not over-complicating the issue? Would a reliable, effiecent and safe network of busses not do the same job if they were sensibly routed avoiding the need for drop of zones at all? I used to enjoy catching the school bus, chatting with mates and catching up on homework!

I like the idea in more rural locations, I think it would work, but is congestion such a problem there? I don't know.

Could there be a connection between the school run and starting times in offices/shops - in this area schools start about 8.45/9.00, and offices shops open up about the same time, so there is going to be a peak of traffic between about 8.30 and 9.00- the morning peak rush. That and the cross town ferrying creates the jams - and the short distance commute to school isn't helped by parential fears over the safety of the children on the way to school - as witnessed recently by the outcry over the proximity of hostels and some schools.

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lets bring sanity back to speed limits.
Drivers are like donkeys -they respond best to a carrot, not a stick .Road safety experts are like Asses - best kept covered up ,or sat on

If it is so bad that people cannot get to their houses then something should be done about that, a clampdown on causing an obstruction for instance.

But did these schools suddenly spring up out of nowhere? Didn't the residents of these houses notice the school at the end of the road when they bought the house?

Now I do walk my kids to school and the main problem we have is the number of residents who park their cars across the pavement.

Habits have changed over the last decade or so. Then, people walked, cycled, caught the bus. Then most towns were considerably smaller than they are now. So, although the school was there when the residents bought the houses, the problems now associated with the school run were not.

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Will

Also - if the school is perecieved as "good and doing well in the pop parade of school league tables" - it then suffers from parents choosing this school above all others and then fighting to get their child placed in the school.

The other side of the coin though.. when a school becomes over-subscribed - class sizes increase and results could then slide.. which means another school and area get hit by congestion from parental power and choice to send child to school outside the immediate catchment area.

Where I grew up? . - Because of oversubscription at their local school caused by pushy parents driving their kids in from further afield... some of thes local kids end up being ferried in a car to an independent school or another school of similar excellence in someone else's local neighbourhood and so on and so on... and thus it spirals.

I think we need to address this issue of failing schools or perceived failing schools and try to ensure all schools deliver the sound basic education we all want for our kids. I'm lucky .. mine all secured places at the local school - and I've been satisfied with their education there.

Of course - these "pampered school run in Chelsea Tractor kids" miss out on the "finer things" of childhood.. like walking home from school and either buyin' a mini-Hovis from the baker's for the princely sum of a tuppeny coin - or buying a two ounce cone of either Jelly Babies or Uncle Joe's Mint Balls from Ye Olde Sweete Shoppe on way home from school - either by bike, bus or a walk dependent on whether I was lugging home the musical instrument I was learning to play (I got a decent grade in the saxophone and a trumpet but they were an item to lug around on a bike .. so I used to get the bus on the Music and Football days.)

eee... them were t' days!

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Approach love and cooking with reckless abandon - but driving with a smile and a COAST calm mind.

And child pedestriancasualties have come down as a direct consequence (I believe).

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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

Sorry, it's not habits.

It's that wonderful Government invention "Choice". In the old days you went to the school nearest you. It was easy to set up busses etc, easy to walk, easy to cycle.

Then the government came up with the extraordinary idea that if you have a poor school, and offer all the concerned pupils, (the ones with money and cars ), the opportunity to go to a better school, the other side of town, then the poor school would get better.

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Paul, could you say if child pedestrian casualties have come down in proportion to other road deaths? Also what if young driver casualties have increased?

More time spent in a car = less awareness of the risks on a road = more risk taking when learning to drive : more reliance on car = dismissal of public transport from mindset when considering method of transport to university/first job etc. (on this latter point, when I was at uni, almost no student had a car, we walked, cycled, got the bus, occasionally a taxi, or hired a car. Now it seems a car is de rigeur for a student, and yet they live and study in the same places).

Child pedestrians are the highest performing group (i.e greatest reductions over the last decade). I believe that the primary distinguishing factor from all other groups is that parents are more risk averse and are keeping them away from roads.



Familiarity breeds contempt? But familiarity also breeds risk-avoiding experience. Since road safety only exists because of the latter, I think we can be assured about the relative importance, but still need to guard against the former.

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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

I don't think it's familiarity for the youngsters. In fact, it's quite the opposite. Cocooned in their parents' cars, they are shielded from the dangers present on the roads. Playstation etc. driving games gives them a false impression of invincibility. So when they have had just enough training to prove to the man from the ministry that they have adequate basic driving ability and are let loose on the road on their own, they do not properly appreciate the risks ... and if you don't appreciate the risks you can't properly manage the risks.

IOW, the reduction in primary and secondary school age KSI might not be the benefit it seems if a side effect is a higher number of young drivers (and those with who the young drivers collide) adding more to the KSI figures than the reduction in school age KSI.

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Will

Yep. That's the opposite side of the same coin. I said road safety depends on experience. You said the inexperienced aren't good at road safety.

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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

B .. I do agree. As a parent.. I naturally want the best on offer for my kids. I admit to opting for an independent . partly because their disciplinary procedures had the "edge" over the state school and my own brood are proverbial "chips off the old block"
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IG has made a very similar observation and I would agree that we need to improve all schools to the same standards.

All are entitled to a decent education. We cannot buy or manufacture brains to conform to a "model"..but we can try to make all people achieve to the best of their own potential and . as far as we are able . at least try to make them strive towards higher goals as much as we can.

I admit . as foster father.. cursedly darned difficult.
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Um.. I was supposed to take up a place at Magdalen, Cambridge. Only .. I had to read Latin for a year and not have a car for two years under their rubric back in academic year starting 1976.

I decided to study in St Andrews. .. on basis that I could have car....play golf and obtain a really good grounding in pre-clinical medical studies.



My eldest followed me into medicine and studies at St Andrews. I run his car on basis that he had a cottage which he shares just outside the town and his home returns are a bit of a chore without the convenience of a car. However, I know from funding his petrol costs... he cycles more to lectures

Of my twins .. my daughter looks set to pursue her studies in Durham and my second son.. he plans to study in either Bristol or Oxbridge at the moment.

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