People who drive their children to school and "School Streets"

[Needmorelego]

Good Morning All.
I am after some honest answers about "School Streets" and driving to school.
The scheme closes roads outside schools at drop off/pick up times so people can't drive down the road and/or park there. This is supposed to encourage less cars outside schools.
Now - honest answers - if you drive your children and your school has one of these schemes have you actually stopped driving or have you just taken to parking somewhere else (like the next road over).
Thanks.
(not a journalist - it's just this scheme is being introduced where I live and it's going to be a pain in the arse for residents for various reasons)

The school streets in our area the residents have a pass to get through. The wardens controlling entry to the street also are aware of properties with elderly or disabled residents who may need frequent carers or visitors and are trained to facilitate swift access. Those carers can now access the properties more easily as they aren't blocked by school parents.

We have one and I love it!

I think the aim is to prevent driving to school, and also to make it safer. Something I hated before they introduced it is cars would be idling right outside the gates, it was fumey and gross

Also, we don't live far from school- we usually walk or cycle. But before they introduced the scheme I would would sometimes drive up if the weather was really bad. But no I never do. So that's one less car.

@ImInACage
It's fair enough if you buy close to a school that you expect these issues and the house is valued as such,

Seriously? The houses in our road are very popular, and priced as such, partly because the school is so close. It's also an ordinary suburban side road which, for complex reasons, has the only access to the secondary school. The resultant chaos twice a day has to be seen to be believed and has worsened. Cars arriving 30 minutes before kicking out time, leaving engines running doesn't help air quality either. Nor does driving up pavements!

We (residents) have had countless meetings with council, school etc but there's never any money despite the issues being acknowledged. I'd love the inconvenience of a 'school street' as we can't go in or out twice a day as it is.

I live outside of a large primary school they have permanently closed the road the school is on - my children go to another school which is not walkable and I often come home after school drop off to parents parked in and across my drive so I cannot get in!

It is so much worse since the road closed and has just increased the area of the problem and made the parking worse.

I live in a semi rural area, so people travel to school. There used to be a bus pass which was reasonably priced so everyone caught buses. However, the price has steadily gone up so for two or more children, it’s now cheaper to drive.

i scheme like above would encourage people to park further away. If they want fewer cars, then they need to have a better, more affordable bus service in the area.

I’ve got skin in this game and this is probably outing, but…

as i understand it, school streets is not designed to block residents’ traffic to houses within the closure zone, but it would stop residents passing through. So for a couple of times a day it might be less convenient for some residents, but would also make the through roads quieter

As others have said, the primary aim is to improve safety at the school gates - this has been a huge problem at out school, and some parents just do not care as long as their little darling is safe (I have actually had someone argue with me that their parking on the zigzags is for the safety of their children).

Active travel is a secondary aim of these schemes and in my mind they are more suited to urban areas. Our school catchment is <1 mile in diameter, our school walk is 15 mins max (child’s pace), and so many families drive (only to drive straight home again). I do have sympathy for people going on to work, and do drive when that is the case for me, but I park a little further over as it helps with step count and means I don’t get stuck in congestion. Many non-work related activities are non- time sensitive and so the 10 minute walk home (sans kids) is no issue.

There are huge benefits to active travel to school for children and communities (well-being wise but also emissions), this is something we should really embrace. I’m really going to miss the school run when my kids leave primary.

Interesting! Do they actually close the road? How do they police it? I'd imagine the inconsiderate parkers will just carry on unless the road is actually closed off or actively policed?

I do drive to school, and I choose to park on the next street not the school street. I can't not drive. I live too far away and have to get two kids to different places. But I do park considerately. Unlike many that park on the school zigzag markings, on double yellows, on the pavement, etc.

Actually it's quite common in our area. The local school is 6/7 mins walk from our street and some of our neighbours drive their kids to it and drive straight back home. No physical disabilities. I don't think it's laziness either, it's a cultural/status thing, some people just don't want to be seen walking.

Here people travel a long way, past multiple other primary schools, to get to the one nearest me.
It's insane. Local children within 1/4 mile then get allocated schools more than a mile away. People literally driving past other schools to get to a further away school.
The council should remap schools according to near where you live and not allowing this nonsense of people attending schools 6 miles away.

It’s a huge inconvenience to residents they can’t have visitors or deliveries during these times, often things like deliveries you have no control over the time. The majority of parents dropping off are then going directly onto work with a very small turnaround time, it’s rarely the case of lazy parents choosing to drive as is usually portrayed.

It just pushes the issue to neighbouring roads and makes congestion worse. This doesn’t make it safer for children walking to school.

Better parking enforcement on school streets is what is needed to make it safer.

For a lor of parents it's not so much leaving more time to get to school as needing to be as close as possible to the car after dropping off at the earliest possible time to get to work that is the limiting factor.

I could walk the kids to school and get the train to work (admittedly would need to drive to station) if breakfast club started 15 minutes earlier but as it is I can just get to work on time if I drop them by car as early as possible and the traffic behaves ...

Ok....I am back.
Residents who own cars will be able to apply for permits.
It's an area however where ironically many residents don't have their own cars.
My daughter gets a taxi (paid by the borough) to her SEN school. This scheme means we won't be able to get the taxi from outside my flats. Many other elderly residents regularly use taxis.
Deliveries will be affected. As it's an area with many residents with no cars there's a lot of supermarket etc deliveries.
My neighbour has a regular district nurse - I am not sure how that will be affected.
Basically - for the residents it will affect our day to day lives.
For those who drive their kids to school it won't affect them because they will still drive - but just park in the next streets over.

It works where I am because the council have also introduced controlled parking zones in all the surrounding streets, so the residents have to pay for permits.

What about deliveries?
Genuine question, Amazon seem to always come at 3.30pm when the school pick up is in progress!

The peak time for us is 0840-0845. So if people are dropping off their kids by car to then drive to work, is it reasonable for them to be able to do this in such a short turnaround anyway? I know that not everyone starts work at 9, but it has been my experience that most do.
There isn’t enough parking at my DCs’ school, so people get there very early and sits there taking up space with their engines idling. The not so early ones do drop off on the zigzags. So not great.

We live round the corner from a secondary school and I would welcome a parking exclusion zone at school run times. We’ve had people park across our driveway, blocking access, and in one case I came home in the middle of afternoon school run to find the road jammed with cars, and that someone had actually parked on the driveway. At afternoon pick up, we also regularly have parents sitting outside the house in their cars with the engines running until their children arrive, although i’ve noticed recently that PCSOs have started to patrol at school times so someone has evidently complained.

I am not sure the point is to discourage driving to school. I have always heard it explained as a way to prevent the jostle of the kids happening too closely to the cars.

If all the parents have to walk one street to pick up their kid and bring them to the respective cars, the changes of an accident happening with a child getting under a car go down massively.
When they all come out of school, chat to their friends, look around, .... and you combine that with parking manoeuvres, the chaos is dangerous. Hence parking a street away is a great solution.

Where is all the public/school transport and why aren't children using it?

@XelaM

It's been much easier for us. No one now parks across our driveway. We can actually get out of our road instead of struggling to see past hundreds of badly parked cars.

I think what helps is that we have reasonable sized driveways so any visitors can park on them rather than the road.

I guess like everything, each school and road is different.

My dc are past the primary school age thank god, but from what I hear, parents just park in the adjacent streets. Despite what proponents of these schemes will have you believe, most parents don’t choose to drive but are forced to because there are limited breakfast club options or if they’re available they don’t start early enough, or the council has allocated them a school that’s miles away, or the developers have built 100s of houses with no schools or public transport links (and aren’t required to) and so there’s no option but to drive, or - drum roll for the obvious - both parents work and drop their DC at school on their way to work.

Councils can close off roads all they like but cars are a fact of life - and until they sort the above all it does is shift the parking/driving problem elsewhere.

Absolute rubbish, two spots of rain in the air and most of the parents around here think their kids might dissolve if they don't pick them up in the car.

We have to drive as we have autistic dc who can't use public transport at 3 different schools. All the children go to our nearest school/college but the primary school is over a mile away, secondary school is nearly 2 miles away and college is 6 miles away. We struggle to get them all in on time with the car, it would be impossible without it.

Because you need to be over 2/3 miles away depending on age.

Stopping parking on certain streets doesn’t stop people driving but just means they find different streets to park on.

Schools need to better think things out for disabled students (and parents).

At my primary, the head grants permission to those who need it to come and use the teacher's parking for drop-off, and they often pick up from the same spot 5 mins earlier than the other kids are let out (not always, depends if the chaos of kicking out is a problem for a particular child).

It just requires someone to apply some common sense, and importantly, have the strength of character to defend it from chancers.

Ditto the idea that taxis won't be able to use the street at the time - it's just plain ridiculous.

Before doing it, they need to do an impact assessment surely, and preventing a SEN child's taxi from using the street sounds like it should be an issue (and a solvable one with 2 seconds of thought)