A Newcastle dad has called for action to finally put an end to a “crush of cars” outside his son’s school.
Newcastle City Council announced more than a year ago that it would prevent parents from driving to pick up or drop off their kids outside the gates of 11 schools, in the hope of improving safety for children, cutting harmful air pollution, and encouraging more people to walk or cycle. The ‘School Streets’ scheme would have seen vehicles blocked from roads outside the schools between the hours of 8am and 9.30am and between 2.30pm and 4pm, with the project initially due to be introduced in summer 2021.
But, since the local authority’s announcement of the programme in March last year, progress has been minimal – with only a handful of one-day trials having been held. Kieran McSherry, whose son Leo attends Hotspur Primary School in Heaton, has been left increasingly frustrated by the delays and said it “does not make sense that the council talks about changing people’s habits, but then does nothing to do that”.
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The 35-year-old added: “It is disappointing that every day there is a crush of cars taking up all of the road space. There is no space if you want to cycle and it can feel quite hostile.
"We live in a city and in a society where the car is king, our cultural default is to drive from your front door to the gates of the school. People cannot see past that and it is the way our roads are designed too.
“The council say that they want to change that but they seem to be doing nothing about it. Surely it is not that big of a thing to change? It is just blocking vehicles from a street at a couple of times during the day.”
Mr McSherry lives in Fenham and cycles across the city to get to the school, sometimes taking several children in a cargo bike shared with other families. The architect, who also has a one-year-old daughter, said that hostile scenes of “parents shouting and people battling to get in their cars” outside the Mowbray Street school means that youngsters “cannot be kids until they are inside the school fence”.
The other primary schools included in the initial list of 11 were Ravenswood, Chillingham Road, Grange Park, Kingston Park, Dame Allan’s, Sacred Heart, Broadwood, Lemington Riverside, Farne, and Westgate Hill. The city council did not give a new target date for when any School Streets might now be introduced.
A spokesperson said: “Since announcing our intention to put in place School Streets last year we have been working directly with the schools we’d identified as a first phase in the programme. One of the most important things in the delivery of this programme is to work with people who might be affected and listen to their concerns so we can address them.
“One of our team has been visiting the schools regularly and working with the teachers, young people and those who live nearby to help understand the impacts and how we can promote and manage School Streets, or indeed where they might not be the right solution at this point in time. We’ve also undertaken trial runs of School Streets at a number of locations.
“We had been waiting for government to formally transfer certain enforcement powers to local authorities, and to provide funding for measures of this type, something we’re happy to note has now been brought forward. Many schools have told us they would like to see these powers in place alongside implementing schemes to help ensure pupil’s safety.
“Pupils at Hotspur Primary School are currently leading the way as part of our Big Walk and Wheel competition, with nearly two thirds of trips being active. This is a competition we’re running with schools who’ve opted in across the city and it complements ongoing work we’re doing with the city’s Promise Board, which represents every single schools trust across the city, to bring forward a joint approach to improving safety and sustainability for the school run.”
