This week we welcome a guest blog from local Lambeth parents and their successful campaign for an ambitious School Street. While the campaign was run from community group Rosendale Clean Air, several members of the group used their learnings to found local charity Solve the School Run. This organisation now provides school travel data insights and resources for communities and local authorities working towards safer and greener school runs.
A quick reminder that we are closing our survey this week! Please send us your feedback on this blog! But without further ado, over to Nicola and Tom to tell the Rosendale story…
Ambition in complexity
The Rosendale and Turney School Street is one of the most complex and ambitious in Lambeth and probably London. It has created a timed low traffic area around one of Lambeth’s largest primary schools and the Turney SEND school next door.
The School Street is approximately 2km of road network.
It is situated around two schools, with a total of around 900 children.
It is on a busy road which saw 800 cars per hour during school run time of 8-9am. This was mostly through-traffic rather than traffic generated by the schools.
It has created an active travel corridor for thousands of others who travel through the area to the many local primary and secondary schools nearby.
It showcases how a School Street can benefit:
The children at the local school as well as nearby schools.
The residents who live nearby.
Cyclists who commute more safely through the area.
Neighbouring roads which have seen a reduction in congestion.
How it began
Our first request was in 2018 when School Streets were first being introduced. It was at a time when no-one knew much about how they would work, and ambition was low. A complex situation like the one we had seemed far too difficult. Our request was rejected on the grounds that:
Rosendale Road had too high traffic volumes which would make implementation difficult and also and this would cause.
Displacement on to a neighbouring road, which already saw very high traffic volumes. This was naturally a huge concern for everyone in the area as well as councillors and council officers.
And a SEND school meant these school bus and car journeys would need to be prioritised through the School Street.
A community response
Due to the high volume of traffic on a neighbouring road, and the increased stress this caused to those residents and the area in general, we could see the need to pull the community together. Councillors and council officers needed to see that all parts of the community would support this measure. So we began a campaign to highlight the issues and bring together people who felt that children should be prioritised.
As parents with children at the school we built a community around getting the TfL Travel for Life GOLD award.
A Breathe London air pollution monitor also highlighted the issues locally, so it wasn’t just anecdotal, it was easy to compare the situation here with other locations nearby.
This created a wide network of clued up people who could show the councillors the huge appetite for change.
Challenging the transport planners…
Using sustainable travel data to counter-act a car-centric view
The traffic volume on Rosendale Road of 800 cars between 8-9 am hour (mostly through-traffic not generated by the schools themselves) was consistently used by council officers as a reason why the school street couldn’t go ahead. We learned that the most effective overall communications approach to the local community and the council was to constantly challenge the car-centric focus of 800 cars/hour with the equivalent sustainable travel data that showed there were well in excess of 1,200 sustainable travel journeys being made along the road in that same time. Why were cars being prioritised at that time when there were many more people walking and cycling? We strongly recommend using data on sustainable journeys wherever you can in your campaigning and you can find out more information on how to do this using our healthy streets resources and school travel data dashboard.
Using short-term road closures to analyse traffic displacement
A local short-term road closure which simulated the School Street gave us the opportunity to analyse the traffic displacement impact on surrounding roads. The analysis for those interested in doing something similar can be found here. It showed that counter-intuitively, the closure of Rosendale Road benefitted traffic volumes in adjacent roads by evening out traffic flows throughout the area. This was independently verified by the council’s own analysis.
Key campaign events
Lambeth council are at the forefront of School Streets, but this implementation was going to be one of the most ambitious and complex they’d yet delivered and both officers and councillors needed to be convinced that their objections had been overcome. To do this we held lots of very positive events, including
Two deputations to full council.
A bike bus with our local MP and councillors.
A walk and wheel event with several local schools and local politicians.
Did we all live happily ever after…?
The roads are now much safer in the morning. A small number of cars travel through to access the SEND school and residential homes, but not the 800 per hour so many families had to contend with. Parents congregate on the pavements for a chat after drop off, and at pick up the children mosey along, chatting to their friends without the ever-present threat of traffic.
There is still work to be done, and we continue to campaign for road safety measures and zebra crossings in the roads outside the School Street. But beyond the safer and healthier school journey, perhaps the most unanticipated benefit of the last five years has been the community relationships that have been developed. Schools are at the heart of our communities and engaging with parents and residents throughout the area has brought much friendship and opportunity.
Such a super positive story! thanks sos much for sharing!