Cars to be banned from roads near 11 Edinburgh primary schools in pilot scheme

A local school used to have a sign which read "What part of SCHOOL KEEP CLEAR don't you understand?" That seemed to be on the right level . . . . .

slap in double yellow lines with no waiting and no loading/unloading restrictions for 200 yards either side of a school entrance/gate and also make the 1 mile around the school residents parking ONLY. And enforce them...

racyrich wrote:

Funny how warm and fluffy fascist solutions can be made to sound.
Of course cars shouldn't be banned from near schools. Why should people going about their everyday business be banned because of a subset of inconsiderate parents. Why is the default response to a minority causing a problem always to stop everyone?

Cramond - entrance from cul-de-sac, Duddingston - same, Colinton - top of a hill leading to dead-end road, Sciennes - minor residential street with major road 200m to the north. So inconsiderate parents will be hardest hit and are the biggest problem. Them and rat-running scumbags. Fascist? I think not - a realistic idea that has the potential to (a) improve road safety for the most vulnerable users and (b) make people think how ******* lazy they are...

There are plenty of roads a short distance away from Cramond primary where parents can park their Q7s and then walk to the school, which is what I expect will happen. The same goes for Clerry, though the cars won't be Q7s.

Funny how warm and fluffy fascist solutions can be made to sound.
Of course cars shouldn't be banned from near schools. Why should people going about their everyday business be banned because of a subset of inconsiderate parents. Why is the default response to a minority causing a problem always to stop everyone?
The correct solution is to blockade all cars carrying a child wearing the uniform of that school.

What a fantastic idea. Here in Oxford we have a primary school on the other side of a canal with no alternative entrance but a bridge which is blocked to all except pass holders at school "dropping off" and "picking up" times. And guess what - it has fantastic figures for kids cycling or walking to school.

Well done Edinburgh.

I live in a smallish village outside Bristol. Pretty much the entire village, the entire "catchment area" (is that still a thing?) for the primary school falls within a one kilometre radius circle of the school.

How do I know this, you ask? Because in the school's lobby there is an OS-type map of the village, with a circle drawn on it for a one kilometre radius centred on the school. Coloured dots mark where children at the school live, and how they "usually" get to school. Green dots marked "arrived by car", blue dots "walked", etc. Apparently this was done a couple of years ago. Basically, the village is a sea of green dots. The school is on a long straight road, ostensibly two lanes, with houses on one side and houses, then the school, then more houses, on the other.

My wife always walks our children to school (takes 5-10 minutes, depending on how distracted the kids are). Very, very few other people do.

People arrive early for school, to get "good" parking spaces nearby. Then their kids walk the few metres to get into the school grounds. People will park a bit further away and then parent and child will get out and walk down to the school, to look less as if they just drove there. Picking-up and dropping-off times are awful - horns hooting, people waving at each other, shouting.

A couple of years ago a boy was knocked down outside the school - ran out between two parked cars and got hit by a car being driven down there at about 10mph (you can't drive any faster than that along there when it's picking-up/dropping-off time, as the road becomes a narrow single lane between all the parked cars). Child got a broken leg. Driver was distraught.

The school finally got in touch with the council and the police, and a new "designated crossing point" was put in, with a road narrowing exercise.

It didn't make much of a difference, and things are back to normal. The school sent a letter home to all parents, most of whom jutt ignored it completely.

The Edinburgh exercise looks interesting - in my opinion, at my children's school they need to close the entire road outside the school to motor traffic during certain times. Just that one road, and only to anyone who isn't a resident actually living on that road or (perhaps) a taxi or something like that. Because there is no reason at all that children and parents cannot walk (or cycle, it could happen!) to school from one kilometre away.

Make it mandatory everywhere.

We live < 0.5 mile from our childs school, you wouldn't believe the amount of people we walk past (already almost halfway there) who we see getting into a car and then see them at the school gate a minute or two later dropping their kids off.

And no, they aren't on their way somewhere else. On the way back the car is already back in the parking space.

Though I should probably add, this will likely just move the problem a bit further down the road, making that part of the school journey dangerous rather than right outside the school.

The real answer of course is getting people to stop such frivolous use of their car. Getting them to actually think about consideration for other people is probably a step too far though, lets not overstretch the targets.

Yes times a million

My local primary school looks like a drive through McDonald's at 8:50 every morning. If they could drive into their child's classroom, most parents would.

Brilliant. Well done Edinburgh for having the balls to try it.

I guess indicators of success will be popularity (in the mid to long term) and child safety stats. And as to whether it will work? Well there's only one way to find out isn't there.

Of the 4 primary schools nearest my home, 2 are on the main road through the town, and the other 2 are on a road through the neighbouring town which leads to the train station.
A fair bit of the city commuter population of this area drive past those 4 schools, and its pretty much unavoidable.

Personally I find, whether I'm cycling or driving, that its the schoolparents themselves who are clearly distracted drivers; not noticing speedbumps until it's too late, suddenly stopping without indication, pulling away as soon as the kid is gone without checking mirrors, etc.

I was fortunate/unfortunate enough to be on one of those driver awareness courses a few years ago, and found it interesting that an experiment speed check outside a school in Gloucester found over 80% of people passing the end of a road with a school on it, were over the speed limit. They did a cross-check and the majority were users of the school - either teachers or parents of the kids they were potentially 'endangering'.

"other than those who were exempt such as holders of blue badges,"

There we go, broken already!

Hold on a minute, what if a load of crazy sharp toothed baboons escape from Edinburgh Zoo and start roaming the streets adjacent to some of these schools. Are we suggesting that parents should abandon their kids to the chances of probable non-hominid primate predation, are we? Madness.

What a great idea. I live in Edinburgh, and have a primary school about 3 minutes walk away, so imagine this will really inconvenience me. I still think it is a fantastic thing to do, and wholeheartedly support it.

What a great idea. I live in Edinburgh, and have a primary school about 3 minutes walk away, so imagine this will really inconvenience me. I still think it is a fantastic thing to do, and wholeheartedly support it.

About time somebody took the initiative

LoL. Drivers in Embra Drive in the Bus Lanes when their not supposed to, and Don't when they can, the chance of this working is very slim. TBH it may stop people from driving their kids the 1/3 of a mile to school, then abandoning their cars on pavements and where ever takes their fancy.

Yes. Yes. Banning other motorists from the road is clearly a good idea. They're all incredibly dangerous. Frankly they're slow. And they get in my way.

It will still be OK for me to drop off the kiddies in my Q7. Won't it? After all the roads are really dangerous and I love them so much I just have to wrap them up in a tank. I'm not really a motorist as such, just someone trying to get from A to B.

End Sarcasm.

If they can enforce this then it sounds like a great initiative.

IF!

Totally agree with this. All schools should have a ¼ mile exclusion zone around them at school start and stop times.