News from Caroline Russell: School pupils need safe streets

Speeding traffic must be slowed to 20 mph so children walking and cycling to school feel safe, says Caroline Russell AM.



Caroline has written to the Secretary of State for Transport, Grant Shapps, to ask for a reduction in the default urban speed limit, alongside more enforcement against people speeding and further investment in walking and cycling.

The Government has issued guidance that says at a national level at least half of all journeys to school under two miles need to switch to walking and cycling in order to provide capacity for those making longer journeys. [1]

This change in travel habits is unprecedented in scale, and would be a welcome improvement in active travel with young people using bikes and scooters, but it needs more investment in healthy streets to be possible for every child across the country.

The risk is that more parents will drive for the school run rather than allow young people to walk and cycle. Already motor traffic in Great Britain is exceeding pre-lockdown levels despite millions of people still working from home [2]

Caroline Russell says:

I want more children to be able to walk and cycle to school, and it should be the easiest and safest option. However, I know there are too many scary main roads, and speeding vehicles to make that the obvious option.

In London people are going to find bits of their journey are better but we can do much more to make our streets safe. The Mayor had £100m of bids for Streetspace funding, and was only able to award £30m. Now, several weeks later just £6.5m has been invested. We need more money and we need more action to make streets safe.

Fast traffic makes crossing main roads harder and can mean even roads with little traffic are unpleasant to cycle on. Moving our default urban speed limit down to 20mph is a simple change with enormous impact that Grant Shapps can make tomorrow. It would need strong communications but no expensive new signage and as an emergency message it would send a wider signal to drivers to slow down across London. Our children deserve a safe journey to school.

Since lockdown the Department for Transport has only provided one tranche of funding for changes to streets to support walking and cycling, with a second provision of funding within London to support the larger shift from public transport needed. A second tranche of funding from the Emergency Active Travel Fund is still not allocated, and after that no more funding for walking and cycling is in the pipeline in the current financial year.