| E-Petition: “As one of many parents who walk their child to school along Branch Road in St Albans, I am continually concerned about the speed at which some cars drive down the road. Please can you consider reducing the speed to 20 as well as consider some appropriate school signage?” The concerns raised within this petition have been considered by officers and discussed with the local County Councillor in whose division Branch Road is located. Attempts have been made to contact the Lead Petitioner in order to meet on site to further understand her concerns, but so far these attempts have been unsuccessful.The County Council has not identified the reduction of the speed limit in Branch Road as a priority, or as a site requiring further investigation for safety measures.The County Council has a programme of work which is designed to make its roads safer. This is known as the Safety Engineering Programme of work, and safety engineering specialists consider all reported personal injury collisions in the County on an annual basis, and identify locations where there are concentrations of reported injury collisions. Road safety engineering schemes are then promoted, on a prioritised basis, where it is identified that aspects of the road environment could be modified and/or improved to reduce the potential for future collisions. Our collision records at and near to this location have been investigated and these show there have not been any collisions which have resulted in injury in the last three years. Therefore a scheme to reduce the speed limit in Branch Road would not attract core funding from the County Council’s annual Road Safety budget. All schools throughout the County are encouraged to produce and maintain active School Travel Plans, and the County Council's Schools’ Road Safety Officers can offer to support and provide advice to schools in producing such plans. The School Travel Plan is a document that sets out what improvements can be made in terms of pupils' journeys to and from school, with a particular emphasis placed in shifting the mode of travel to more sustainable means. Where plans identify improvements that might be made to the Highway, funding may be attracted from the County Council’s Safer Routes to Schools programme of work. Such requests are ranked and prioritised for works delivery within the programme. At the time of receipt of this petition, Park Street C of E Primary School and Nursery did not have an active School Travel Plan in place. The County Council’s Road Safety Officers have since met with the school, and the school have now engaged with the Travel Plan process, and are very keen to promote active and sustainable travel for their pupils and parents / carers. As the school’s Travel Plan is developed it will become more apparent as to whether a 20 mph speed limit has been identified by the school as a measure that may support sustainable travel.When the County Council receives a request for a reduction in the existing speed limit, which falls outside of its core programmes of work, initial investigations into the request may be undertaken by means of carrying out traffic speed and volume surveys.There is no funding available from the County Council's core budgets to pay for these surveys at this site. However, the local County Councillor for the Division in which this request sits, will consider funding the cost of the surveys using the Highway Locality Budget scheme in a future financial year. Once the surveys have been completed, it is proposed to present the findings to the County Councillor in order to determine and agree the next course of action.In terms of road signs, there is one ‘School Ahead’ sign in Branch Road, and two on the A5183 Frogmore, one in each direction on the approach to Branch Road. There are also two School Roundel road markings on the A5183, approaching Branch Road, again with one in each direction. Given that the footway widths in Branch Road are narrow, it is not possible to provide any additional signs within the road, as the posts that would be required for such a sign would obstruct the footway.However consideration will be given, using the Highway Locality Budget scheme, to renew the existing road signs, clear the vegetation around them, where appropriate, to make them more visible and paint an additional School Roundel road marking in Branch Road. |