Pioneering Cambridge primary bans vehicles from school run
A primary school is hoping to become Cambridge’s first to make permanent a ban on vehicles during drop-off and pick-up times, paving the way for others across the city and beyond to follow suit.
Cambridgeshire county councillors will decide this month whether to allow road closures outside St Philip’s Primary School in Vinery Way to remain.
St Philip’s headteacher Sally Allan said: “The road outside the school is calmer and safer for everyone and makes for a good start and end to the school day.
“The safety of our children is paramount, and this scheme enables them to walk safely in the road and be socially distanced from other families.”
Parents have praised the 18-month trial for encouraging more children to walk, cycle or scoot, having previously been faced with “fast-moving” traffic “billowing pollution”.
A petition has been launched to gather support for the permanent scheme in the face of a “large negative response”, with volunteers often coming into conflict with some motorists.
For many years the school run to St Philip’s had problems. The school entrance is small and comes out onto Vinery Way at a width restriction where many large vehicles need to turn right outside the primary.
Customers of the nearby shop would frequently park on the yellow zigzags and children going to school on foot or by cycle were met with difficult situations and poor visibility.
Parent Sarah Swire, who leads the volunteers, launched the petition.
She told the Cambridge Independent: “I’m sure there will be some opposition but the vast majority of what we hear is positive. The main negative is that people don’t know why it is happening. When they talk to us they understand and people are generally quite supportive.
“The school has quite a narrow driveway that comes straight out onto the road and there’s not a lot of pavement space with cars parked on the pavement.
“So it was quite a narrow congested area and at two points in the day, there were a lot of people. The closure makes it a lot more relaxed and everyone’s got space to spread out. It also gets children into good habits for life.
“It would be good if this could be around a lot more schools and people start to expect that they can’t drive past a primary school at certain times of the day.”
The parents of a Year 5 pupil said it was “so nice to see children walking, biking, scooting to school”, adding: “Even when using the pavement before, traffic went too fast and close to the cycle lane, [with] pollution billowing.”
A recent report into School Streets in London showed that closing roads to motor vehicles at pick-up and drop-off times had cut toxic nitrogen dioxide levels by up to 23 per cent.
In addition to improving children’s health, research suggests this level of improvement could also aid their ability to learn through improvements to the development of children’s working memory. Air pollution can lead to both short-term and long-term effects on health.
Experts warn children are more vulnerable to breathing in polluted air than adults as they breathe more air each minute compared to adults. Young children in buggies and prams are also on a level with vehicle exhausts.
Children who breathe in high levels of air pollution over a long period might be at risk of their lungs not working as well when they grow older and of developing related health conditions, such as asthma, wheezing
and coughs.
In Cambridge, there are known hotspots of poor air quality with education establishments particularly impacted during the school run.
Cambridgeshire County Council introduced School Streets in September 2020 during the Covid-19 pandemic as a way of creating a safe space outside the school gates.
Schools can temporarily close the road outside the school gates to create a pedestrian and cycle/scoot zone during school opening and closing times.
The School Streets scheme is a national initiative, with councils providing training, road signs, and equipment.
Times will vary slightly for each school but usually the road will be shut for around 30 minutes in both the morning and afternoon.
The schemes are implemented under Experimental Traffic Regulation Orders (ETROs), which run for 18 months.
The closures, which for St Philip’s are in three locations around the school on Vinery Way and Vinery Road, are manned by a volunteer group of parents and local residents. Most volunteers do one shift at pick-up or drop-off times, some more.
The morning closure at St Philip’s starts at 8.30am and the afternoon closure at 3.05pm.
“A big thumbs-up to the road closure,” said a Year 3 parent. “It makes it so much easier and peaceful to walk with the kids and chat with them before getting into the school driveway, where things, as we know, are a little different now.”
St Bede’s Inter-Church School and St Matthew’s Primary School in Cambridge are also part of the School Streets scheme and signed up in April last year.
Cambridge cycling campaign Camcycle has also pledged its support for the scheme.
A county council spokesperson said: “We are aware of the School Streets scheme petitions regarding St Philip’s School in Cambridge.
“Cambridgeshire County Council understands the positives of no-car zones, supports active travel and is committed to ensuring road safety across all parts of the county, including near schools. Decisions about these petitions will be made at the council’s highways and transport committee while the policy for future schemes will also be discussed at the strategy and resources committee.”
To sign the petition, visit Change.org.
If you don’t have a School Streets initiative at your school, you can find out more by emailing the School Streets team at
road.safety@cambridgeshire.gov.uk.
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