Pedestrian Crossings
I have been investigating the Councils priorities for new Pelican crossings in our area. There is a city wide scheme where any proposal is listed and scores points according to various criteria. Here are the possible places in our area along with the current score.
Granville Road (by All Saints School) 10
Manor Oaks Road/Wybourn Primary School 9
Prince of Wales Road/Castlebeck Avenue 9
Manor Lane between Manor Park Road and Seaton Crescent 8
Bernard Road (by Megacentre) 7
Bernard Street at Cricket Inn Road signals 7
Bernard Street (between Cricket Inn Road and Duke Street 7
Norfolk Park Road/All Saints School 7
City Road near Stafford Lane 6
Duke Street at Bernard Street junction 6
Duke Street south of Manor Oaks Road junction 6
Bernard Street at Duke Street signals 6
Manor Lane/Warley Road 6
Duke Street nr Red Lion pub 6
Stafford Road/Fitzwalter Road 6
City Road / Manor Lane 6
City Road between Park Grange Road and Wulfric Road 5
Cricket Inn Road/Whites Lane 5
Shrewsbury Road/Granville Street 5
Around the city there are 6 places that score 10 like Granville Road, so these are the top priorities for the Council. The Granville Road crossing is scheduled to be built in 2010-11. It seems unlikely that crossing possibilities scoring less than 9 will be built unless there is a big transfer of funds from road building to road safety, which is what I would like to see. There are 244 places around the city where people have requested the Council install a crossing and 19 of those are in our area.
Sheffield currently has a ‘hung’ council with no party in overall control. This has enabled the Green Party to get funding for 10 extra pedestrian crossings into the 2008/9 budget.
If you feel strongly about where we should have new crossings, please reply to this article and send an email to John.Bann@sheffield.gov.uk who is head of Transport at the City Council.
One of the important criteria is the number of accidents, so it is very important that all accidents get reported.
My pet hate of a junction at the moment is Bernard Street/Duke Street, where there are traffic lights for cars, but no pelican crossing for the pedestrians. This has become a very dangerous crossing in recent times. I am surprised there haven’t been more accidents there.
The junction between Stafford Road and Fitzwalter Road is on the list, but I don’t think this needs a crossing- it would be better to have some sort of mini roundabout, and measures to slow down cars on Fitzwalter Road . At present, if motorists obeyed the highway code they would never be able to turn out of Glencoe Road onto Fitzwalter Road, because if you stop at the Give Way line you can’t see on coming traffic coming up the hill along Fitzwalter Road. But it is clear we need some accidents here before the Council will be prepared to do anything about it.
So, over to you- how can we make our roads safer? Where would you put a crossing if you could decide where to put it?
That Bernard Street / Duke Street junction is a nightmare to cross on foot. Two lanes of vehicles to be crossed, coming from three directions , the closest of which is behind you and curving away (if you’re going uphill) making it the least visible direction. As a fairly spry person I can nip across it in the tiny gap while lights change over, but I’d hate to be old or limping and try to cross there.
I have complained to the council twice about the Duke St/Bernard St Signals. I was informed that the extensive work done recently was to restore the pressure sensors in the roadway to reduce queues of traffic entering Bernard St from Duke St in order to speed up bus travel down Duke St., and that no consideration was given to pedestrian usage. Further, there are no plans to provide safe access for pedestrians due to the percieved low pedestrian traffic at this junction. I was advised that the only possible route for funding pedestrian safety improvements lay with Urban Spash, the developers of Park Hill, who may invest in the surrounding area if the development creates more pedestrian usage. My wife recently tripped over a raised service cover, in the poorly maintained roadway at this junction, while she tried to rush across the junction in the milliseconds between light changes. She was fortunate not to have been hit by the vehicles racing through the junction and actually brought the traffic to a standstill while she was helped to her feet by two considerate drivers. She luckily only suffered bruising to her knees and hands, but was badly shaken by the experience. Bernard St desperately needs a major effort to improve the safety of pedestrians. It needs alterations to the signals at Duke St and Cricket In Rd., and speed bumps near crossing points. When compared with the pedestrian crossing around Sharrow Lane, Psalter Lane and Ecclesall Rd. South it suggests that the council has a low value for the safety of residents in the Park area.
Dear FbusI’m sorry to hear about your wife’s accident. You have made a very good case for improvements to this junction- but I suspect there will be other stories soon of other junctions- we need to change the council’s spending priorities and make road safety much more important. Then things may start to improve.