‘DE-PRIORITISING’ motor vehicle traffic and discouraging parent parking on verges’ are are the aims of a safety and travel scheme around a York primary school.
Executive member for transport Councillor Pete Kilbane will be asked on March 12 to approve the ‘Badger Hill Active Travel Scheme’ – a £116,260 City of York Council project to improve safety for pedestrians and cyclists travelling in and around Badger Hill Primary School, in Crossways.
A similar scheme in Clifton Green is in the pipeline.
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The £200,000 funding for both projects was granted in March 2022 by the Department for Transport’s ‘Active Travel Programme’ and blueprints were drawn up based on its mandate to improve the convenience and safety of getting around by walking and cycling.
The council aims to encourage more parents to walk or cycle children to school by improving the streets and ‘active travel’ routes to and from them.
Cllr Kilbane will be asked to sign off proposals which include more bollards to prevent verge side parking, low-level fencing around the school entrance, tree-planting on verges and a significant increase in signage.
The council says surveys during its preliminary work on the scheme in Badger Hill showed a high frequency of illegal parking near the school and that traffic speeds regularly exceed the 20mph speed limit.
More calming measures and signage is planned near the school entrance and the fencing would guide pedestrians to specified crossing points, which the council says is easier for passing traffic to predict.
More than a thousand markings would ‘raise driver awareness of cyclists and encourage them to take primary position where the road is too narrow', the documents say.
The council says the proposal will ‘only serve to discourage illegal behaviour’ within existing traffic regulations.
The council documents say internal and electronic consultations involving ward councillors for Hull Road ward were carried out and residents, businesses, parents and staff at Badger Hill Primary School and transport groups were approached.
Twenty per cent of survey respondents said ‘perception of safety’ stopped them from walking or cycling at the moment and around half said existing conditions for pedestrians and cyclists were ‘fair’ or ‘poor’ and the majority of respondents were in favour of the new features.
Council documents say their proposal for the scheme has yet to receive formal approval from Active Travel England.
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