Speeding Families call for action at City Hall
YOUNG families with small children from one corner of Bristol have taken their campaign to get the council to do something about speeding drivers straight to City Hall.
The mums and kids of Lockleaze have delivered 100 handwritten letters from the children to the council’s transport chief Don Alexander, and said that more needs to be done to improve safety on the roads of the suburb.
Dozens of parents and members of the Lockleaze branch of community union Acorn have been campaigning since December 2020 to try to tackle dangerous speeding, heavy traffic and a lack of provision through Lockleaze for people on bikes and on foot, and issued a list of demands in May this year.
And on Friday members told Cllr Alexander that things are only going to get worse given the number of new homes being built on Lockleaze’s previously green and open spaces, and on brownfield sites like Romney House, where planning permission has just been given to build 268 new homes.
The Acorn Lockleaze team has submitted a list of demands, and asked to meet Cllr Alexander, but couldn’t firm up a time and date, so descended on City Hall to doorstep the cabinet member personally. The short term demands are for zebra crossings on Gainsborough Square and
Shaldon Road, near the entrance to Purdown.
In the medium term, they want to see other forms of traffic calming measures on the hotspots not currently being addressed, like Bonnington Walk, Glenfrome Road, Stottbury Road and Dovercourt Road, and in the long-term, the parents want a proper long term strategic plan to be drawn up to make Lockleaze more pedestrian friendly.
“There were two car accidents on my street in July involving speeding vehicles,” said Amber Stechman, from Lockleaze.
“How many more people will get hurt before the council implements long overdue traffic calming measures?”
An Acorn Lockleaze spokesperson added: “For the residents of Lockleaze, change cannot come quick enough.
“The area is earmarked for 24 developments and currently there isn’t an overall strategic plan for traffic calming and traffic as measures are put in on an adhoc basis.
“The roads themselves have largely been unchanged since the 1950s and the area as a whole appears to always be last on the list for everything. While Acorn welcomes the work that has started around Trinity Academy on Romney and parts of Brangywn, along with the work around Springfield Avenue, this does not go far enough.”
Cllr Alexander, the city council’s cabinet member for transport, said he would go and meet with the group in Lockleaze to talk through what can be done, but in the short term, he called on local councillors there to work with the police to enforce the existing speed limits.
“They are a passionate group of people, and they want something done, which is great, but everyone in Lockleaze would need to be in agreement to change around the highways - there’s a legal process to go through, and what I said to them was that things like that take time,” he said.
“In the short term, given some of the stuff they were telling me is happening up there in terms of speeding and driving behaviour, they need to get the police to enforce the existing laws.
“We have a project called Liveable Neighbourhoods coming on stream very soon, and it looks at a whole area and sees what can be done to improve things for people, because you’ve got to be very careful when you take action on things like rat-runs that you don’t just move the problem somewhere else.
“When the Liveable Neighbourhoods are set up, I’ll go up there and meet with them. There’s lots of work to do.”
There were two car accidents on my street in July involving speeding vehicles Amber Stechman