PARENTS AND children are calling for safer walking routes to Tidbury Green School.
Worried parent and Tidbury Green Parish Councillor, Craig Fergusson, has set up a petition calling on Solihull Council to improve routes to the Dickens Heath Road school through the village.
Campaigners say although the school is within walking distance for most residents many are deterred from walking by the unsafe routes caused by motorists and poorly maintained or blocked footpaths and a lack of safe crossing points.
Tidbury Green Parish Council has also recorded dangerous speeds on roads frequently used by pedestrians.
Coun Fergusson said: “As a parent of a child due to start school in September it’s easy for me to understand how off-putting walking to the school can be.
“It’s not just the speeding and frequency of accidents, it’s also the footpaths which are uneven and a hazard in the dark.
“At certain points around the village it’s impossible to get a pushchair around obstructions and on more than a few occasions the wheels on my daughter’s pushchair have buckled against roots and uneven footpath surfacing sending the pushchair careering in the direction of the road.”
According to an online road traffic accident database – crashmap.co.uk – there have been 10 recorded vehicle accidents in the last five years along key routes to the school with the most recent being a fatality on Tilehouse Lane in August.
Coun Fergusson added: “Speeding has been identified by the Parish Council as a serious issue in the village and they have installed digital speed visors to warn motorists to ‘slow down’. The speed visors also record road data which has revealed that up to 47 per cent of all motorists on Tidbury Green roads are committing speed violations.
“Norton Lane is a particular hot spot with residents regularly reporting ‘boy racing’. The Parish Council speed visors have recorded speeds in excess of 80mph on the 30mph stretch of road.”
The petition, which has the support of Blythe and St Alphege Labour Party, has garnered more than 200 signatures.
It is calling for an immediate scheme of works to address critical pedestrian safety issues including an additional zebra crossing over Lowbrook Lane, converting the existing informal pedestrian crossing near the Tidbury Heights entrance into a formal zebra crossing, introduce a speed reduction on Norton Lane and improve footpaths around the area.
It also calls on Solihull Council and the school to work together to improve safety at collection times such as forming a box junction to the visitor car park and a ‘no right turn’.
Coun Fergusson said: “We haven’t done an online petition as we wanted to engage more with the residents and parents of Tidbury Green School to speak with them face to face.
“They gave us a lot of useful feedback on our proposals which confirmed they agreed with our suggestions to improve road safety along key pedestrian routes to the school.
“Residents recently received a Travel Information Pack from Solihull encouraging us to take up greener methods of transport.
“The greenest method of transport to our local school is walking and we are calling on Solihull to make it safer for us to do this.”
