More dangerous hurdles for Arrochar’s walking tinies

This is the junction with the A83 and Church Road in Arrochar this morning – 7th September 2010. The ‘safe’ walking route for primary school children from Arrochar meets the A83 from behind the barricade now in place and followed by a sharp step down in tarmac levels.

The weather was chucking it down – evident in the quality of the photographs – but the same barricaded junction taken from the opposite direction shows that there are actually two step down levels in the tarmac.

This situation – fraught with multiple dangers – forced last minute reshuffling to get all the children driven to school. Argyll and Bute Council had no arrangements in place to deal with this, in terms of ensuring the safety and security of the children whom they have instructed to walk to school on this route.

This is part of the disruption resulting from Scotland Transerv’s beginning road resurfacing work on the A83 between Tarbet and Arrochar – along the section that the Primary School children from Arrochar must now walk.

The works undertaken by Scotland Transerv on trunk roads are outwith the authority of Argyll and Bute Council. We are, though, entitled to expect a vigilant council, careful of the safety of young children, to liaise with Scotland Transerv on specific developments like this blockage on the route. Parents need to be informed and, as the responsible authority, the Council needs to make necessary arrangements to ensure the children’s safety in extraordinary circumstances like these.

The additional hazards they present to parents and the children they are escorting to school on this route though, can only underline the wrong of the Council decision to require the children – who live 1.95 miles from the school in Tarbet.

The limit now adopted by Argyll and Bute Council for the free school bus service these children have, until now, been offered, is 2 miles.

As is obvious on the simple test of common sense, this route is unsafe. It is also unsafe in respect of regulations, with the footpath on the narrow 60mph section of the A83 below the rail bridge west of Tarbet, 30cm – one foot, less than the minimum required.

It is additionally unsafe in the inadequate sightlines of the critical sections at either end of the Church Road section of the walk. Traffic accelerates into these sections, having slowed prior to entering them.

Yet the road has been declared safe – with a number of serious hazards discounted on highly questionable grounds – a matter to which we will shortly return when we receive the full diet of material we have requested under Freedom of Information legislation and when we have finished our examination and analysis of that material.

The photographic evidence of additional hazard

The photographs below were taken yesterday morning – 6th September 2010, in decent weather and before the side road – Church Road – was effectively barricaded as was the case this morning. They show the additional hazards these small children must negotiate. Numbering the photographs 1-4, from top to bottom below, we see:

• Photograph 1: the entrance from the footpath-less Church Road on to the A83 is partially blocked by  a large works tanker vehicle. Ahead of this blockage, on the right hand side of the road and protected by two traffic cones, is equipment for opening and closing a valve in a roadside water or drainage system – offering an additional nuisance. This has also created water spillage running down an otherwise dry road, creating an area which mothers with small children would naturally avoid where possible and narrowing the available room to pass the parked vehicle.

• Photograph 2: shows that the road traffic convoyed through the works area is using the right hand lane of the A83, moving east to Tarbet. When the convoy is coming westwards towards this junction, any vehicles swinging away into Church Road may meet children, parents and pushchairs in a narrow defile past the parked vehicle,. with little notice available to either party.

• Photograph 3:  shows just such a situation on the A83. It is taken, looking westwards, from east of the military cadet building on the far side of the road from the – here hidden – junction with Church Road which comes straight on to the 60mph section of the A83. You can locate this junction through identifying the rear of the two large vehicles in this photograph. It is the large canvas-topped vehicle seen in Photograph 2 on the far side of the A83 looking from the neck of Church Road. This is the junction the Arrochar tinies are having to negotiate at the moment. It is also worth noting the smoke pollution impairing visibility below the canvas-topped works vehicle, probably a tarmac spreader.

• Photograph 4: shows a view from west of the previous photograph, outside the military cadet building, this time looking back east towards Tarbet. Just in front of the series of large roadworks vehicles parked or active on the left hand side, a Scotland Transerv vehicle is actually parked across the footpath the children must use. So what should be some sort of sanctuary for mothers and small children is visibly invaded, unsafe and destabilising,

In the light of this morning’s situation as well as this record of yesterday’s, this is clearly not a stretch of road that Scotland Transerv expect to be used by small children, parents and push chairs walking to school. No allowance has clearly been made for them.

Pre-works liaisons

Scotland Transerv have been very helpful on this matter. Liaison with Argyll and Bute Council, at the planning stage of these works did include the raising of the issue of pedestrian safety. It is not yet clear whether Scotland Transerv were specifically informed that this is now classified as a Safe Route to School – a more intense issue than that of general pedestrian safety. WE will report on this when the information is available.

Scotland Transerv wrote to Arrochar Community Council, informing its members of the works to be done and asking if there were any local issues of which they should be aware. No issues were raised.

The site supervisor has a permanent member of staff assigned to the junction between the A83 and Church Road, detailed to assist pedestrians. And Scotland Transerv presented all 70 local primary school and nursery school children with High Vis jackets to enhance their personal safety.

After the works

These will be completed tomorrow – 8th September 2010.

With regard to the greatest point of danger, the narrow footpath at the narrow road under the rail bridge outside Tarbet, Scotland Transerv’s engineers opinion confirmed that of the parents – that erecting a barrier on the footpath would unacceptably narrow it further.

At the moment, it is wide enough only to accommodate one average adult. A mother cannot keep a child at her side at that point. A mother with a push chair carrying a pre-school child and at least one other child in hand must manage as best she can, with chance too great an element in the event. Narrowing it further by installing a barrier could see the footpath unable to take a push chair; and adults going through it sideways on.

So – when the works are completed, there will be a SLOW sign on both approach lanes to the passage under the rail bridge. There will also be roadside signage drawing vehicle drivers’ attention to the likely presence of school children on the footpath.

Culpability

The arrangements above are all that Scotland Transerv can reasonably contribute. The very real safety issues remain and they lie squarely with Argyll and Bute Council to resolve.

There is a winter to come, with lower light levels, variable weather conditions, poor visibility, wet and fractious children, slippery walking surfaces and tired mothers.

Sooner or later there will be an accident involving a child. If that happens, the Council, the individual staff who classed the route as ‘safe’ and every single Councillor who voted these specific cost-cutting measures through, accepting without question far from adequate information to back up  the recommendations – will be and will be held to be, culpable.

What is the argument against using the local flexibility the Scottish Government guidelines allow? Let’s hear that. There is no clearer case for applying them than this one.