AIBU to think school street restrictions and PCNs will cause more chaos?

[Whatabouttheparcels]

a council near me are introducing school streets to stop congestion outside schools which is a great idea. They are introducing permit parking great

what this means in reality is hundreds of houses aren’t allowed any deliveries, no taxis and no none essential building workers in the area every school workday between 8am and 9.30 and 2.30 and 3.45

A permanent career can get a pass but not random district nurses etc. imagine telling delivery firms they can’t deliver at these times or they will get a PCN. Anyone saying they should use lockers, my last delivery was a dishwasher

AIBU in thinking this is a stupid idea and school traffic will just park a bit further away and this will cause chaos?

https://www.salford.gov.uk/parking-roads-and-travel/school-streets/frequently-asked-questions/

Clicky link or a photo (when approved) if people don’t want to click on the link

At which point you tell them about the time restrictions, if you haven’t already

Some parents will also be collecting children at that time from other schools further away.

Can you explain please?

Thank you for your information. Yes, I know you can state a time with certain larger stores (though it often charges for this) but for a general delivery with a smaller company or with a huge one like Amazon I had no idea that I could schedule a time, other than a particular day. Most delivery drivers don't even have the time to knock at the door and wait!! Evri, DPD and Yodel don't seem to have this facility and ask you for a safe place/leave with a neighbour because they cannot state a time. But perhaps I was given wrong information and I will stand corrected.

The delivery drivers can walk a short distance or organise their rounds to take into account restrictions. It simply isn’t as hard as you’re making out.

YANBU - the ease with which some PPs suggest that delivery drivers (one of the lowest paid and unappreciated jobs going) can just walk or "adapt" shows just how removed from reality some people are.

Our Evri and DPD drivers are the same two blokes each time. They will know that certain streets have delivery restrictions.

Yes I am sure you are correct. Although as a foster carer who has a very busy school run myself as it involves multiple different schools (4 at present) I have in the past asked for deliveries not to be during school run time, and have never once been successful in arranging it!!! LOL

I so agree. Literally seconds for them to deliver a parcel (hence not able to wait for the door to be opened) and a bathroom break - just forget it!! I was once told they have to deliver 250-300 parcels a day!

@LittleBearPad - you are lucky then if you have the same drivers and they may well be as open to just 'adapting' as so many suggest if the same restrictions applied in your road.

At which point, they will say sorry there's no guarantee and you may well end up not being able to get what you need.

This approach is just too restrictive, especially when there are many other ways to make roads safer, as have already been discussed on here.

I live in one of these zones - this is exactly what they do! These zones are small, it is often just parking round the corner. Our Amazon delivery driver just puts all the deliveries in a large bag and drags it up the street. It’s not that different to deliveries for the addresses on the main road near us. It’s a bus lane, so delivery drivers can’t park on the road. They park on a neighbouring road and walk round.

The only solution I can think of is de-prioritising any faith and sibling criteria on school admissions, as this would prioritise distance and reduce the phenomenon of families moving away from school after the first child has been admitted. Perhaps sibling link could only be considered at appeal?

But that would be considered controversial, to say the least!

evri driver here. Just trying to work out what would happen in practice.

If I'm doing 250 parcels in an urban area, then believe me, every second counts. I receive my manifest in the morning with a recommended route. I have the ability to move things around, which I do for anything stupid, but wholesale change really causes problems. You find if you move one bit, then another bit would make sense elsewhere, causing another bit to need doubling back etc etc
And if I did this amount of route tweaking, it'd add half an hour planning unpaid to my day.

The morning restrictions wouldn't affect evri drivers (well rarely) because most of us don't get delivering till about 10ish once we've finished loading. But the afternoon one is slap bang in the middle of proceedings, I'm just not gonna be able to work round that.

So maybe some days I might hit the area by 2 (hypothetically if that's where it fell in the route), but I haven't just got one delivery there, I've got maybe 15? Well I need to be sure I can do the lot, and get out again. So now the time I need to complete is much longer than the time slot.

So I'm gonna park round the corner and walk. Fine if there's space, but if it's getting towards zone time, there probably isn't. And anyway, as I said, could be maybe 15 deliveries, up to 17.5 kg each. I'm gonna need a trolley. Fine, so now I've gone down the road with my trolley and discovered that the first one is a bag of dog food that's been diverted to the back door. What do I do with the other 14 parcels? Leave them on the urban street?

We're talking parcels that I get an average of 50p for. So even before expenses I'm gonna get £7.50. I need to do this lot in half an hour absolute max. Not happening.

In all honesty I'd plan to hit the restriction as often as poss, and then bulk delivery on Saturdays tbh

But this thread isn’t about parents parking or even deliveries, yes there are ways around these issues

it’s the hard handed approach by not allowing carers, district nurses, taxis or visitors (no visitor permits) into the area for hours during the school day. What about people who need help getting to appointments etc

are they going to starting introducing school streets everywhere there is a school? This is my concern especially as it’s so easy to set up some cameras and start fining people

as @Whenisitmyturntorest said, it used to be some very handed traffic warden at the start of each term would help solve the issue

That’s just not sustainable for the long term though - I doubt local authorities have the funding for this.

One of the issues that WFH has introduced is increased traffic, e.g. deliveries, around schools during busy times.

Introducing school streets really depends on driver behaviour though. Local authorities have been tolerant re a lot of bad behaviour from drivers around schools and it’s grim: including parking on zigzags, speeding, idling engines, using mobile phones, ignoring no entry road signs & failing to stop at pedestrian crossings.

The reason why I take such an interest in road safety is the quite appalling behaviour my DC & I had to put up with in the streets close to our schools (included all of the above). It makes life miserable for people walking, it prevents cycling and it delays the age at which children can walk to school independently. It also causes collisions - and there have been some with child victims near my local schools.

It’s really not that easy to put up cameras - local authorities are unlikely to do this unless there is a considerable safety issue. Even if local authorities do introduce cameras there is a really simple way for drivers to avoid fines - they just have to obey the Highway Code like everyone else.

Unfortunately as drivers we have to accept that if other drivers decide that the rules don’t apply to them, then our access will be restricted. We’re really not the victims here - those are the children who have to put up with some quite appalling behaviour by adult drivers.

Both the school I work at and the one my child attends are "school streets" areas. I understand the problem, but I don't think this really solves it.

The recommended parking area (a park and ride car park) for parents at my sons school is about a 7 minute walk from the school hates. It is a good deterrent for those only living a ten minute walk away anyway, and it was published as being the answer to everything. In reality those parents who really do need to drive are struggling. Children whose parents do multiple drop offs are now always late as the siblings can't be left earlier to compensate for it, and/or parents are late getting to work having to walk back to the car and then get out of the carpark back onto the road (worlds slowest traffic lights to exit). Breakfast club doesn't have the capacity for the additional children that now need it!

There is nothing like that near the school I work at though so that's even worse. It just means all the dangerous and inconsiderate parking is a couple of streets over. It is safer immediately outside of the school, but dangerous for the many children that need to cross that round on their way home.

We are one of those families who could be impacted by the heavy handedness of the rules if they were implemented near us, my little one is on palliative care and there are times when his nurse needs to visit and needs to visit now rather than when the rules said.

It is mainly selfish parents causing the problem as I am sure you know.

The concept isn't bad, but there should be more flexibility around this for essential workers. I got 2 fines in quick succession as a health care professional visiting a family in one of these zones, having visited them many times with no issue, the council then put in a poorly signposted school street restriction and I got 2 x £80 fines. There is no parking near the zone, the child can only be seen at certain times of day due to their medical needs. So now I need to park approx 20 mins walk away, 2 x 20 min walks - fabulous use of nhs time!

I WFH but actually get my deliveries on a Saturday so they don’t disturb my work

i did have to tell my neighbour to take down the sign on his door to deliver all his parcels to my house because I was in and he was out at work

@Bushmillsbabe ah that’s awful you got fined as an essential worker and the 40 min round trip must take a chunk of time when you could be treating people

i had to have daily visits from the district nurses for 6 weeks. The size of bag they carried was huge and a few times they had to go search in their car for something. This can’t be easily done without impacting others with a 40 min walk

Hopefully, no sooner than you’re expecting your reward for most helpful comment on a thread.

Accept my apologies for my previous comment, now I see you must just be joking.