Edinburgh parents are demanding that the council control the busy traffic on roads outside of a local school.
The parents launched a petition demanding that the council install a pedestrian crossing and reduce speed limits.
The petition notes that Edinburgh's Steiner School, on Spylaw Road, is willing to fundraise to meet the costs of any traffic calming measures that Edinburgh Council may introduce.
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The petition has already had over 200 signatures and now Edinburgh Council’s Transport and Environment Committee will meet next week, on Thursday January 27, to decide on the matter.
However, a report prepared ahead of the meeting says that the council’s Road Safety Team are constantly reviewing the need for such measures.
They use a data system to assess such locations and they reviewed Steiner School’s need for a level crossing recently.
The report states: “A crossing assessment was undertaken on Spylaw Road at the Edinburgh Steiner School in October 2021, resulting in an adjusted PV2 value of 0.274. This location does not therefore meet the required criteria for a pedestrian crossing to be provided under the Pedestrian Crossing Prioritisation Programme.”
Again, with traffic calming measures the council use data on collisions and average speeds on the roads to decide whether action is taken and they have already considered the school recently.
The report continued: “In the latest available three year period (to the end of September 2021), there were no personal injury collisions reported to the Police at Spylaw Road, between Gray’s Loan and the junction with Gillsland Road/Mid Gillsland Road.
“It is currently anticipated that the next batch of traffic surveys will be undertaken in Spring 2022 and a speed survey will be carried out at Spylaw Road, at the Edinburgh Steiner School, as part of this batch.”
And it continued by mentioning an upcoming review of the travel plans for all schools: “In addition, the Road Safety team is currently progressing a School Travel Plan Review across all schools in the city by cluster. This piece of work will be carried out over the next 24 months.
“The aim of the review is to develop an Action Plan of measures to be delivered over a five year period for each school, in consultation with parents, children and the schools, to make the routes and streets surrounding each school safer and to encourage more active travel to school.
“This process could potentially enable measures to be implemented at locations where the above criteria have not been met but where there are issues of serious concern to school communities.”
Edinburgh Council will decide whether the petition merits further action or request a further report at the meeting on January 27.
