A Pudsey councillor has called on highways chiefs to reconsider their decision not to consider a number of busy roads for pedestrian crossing points.
As reported last week, Leeds City Council announced nine proposed safety schemes at hotspots across the city as part of a £761,000 scheme to boost road safety. This included a mobile camera on A647 Bradford Road to tackle speeding traffic.
But Councillor Trish Smith (Cons, Pudsey) says several dangerous roads in her ward should have been added. Picking out Fartown, Lidget Hill and Tyersal Road as examples, she said:
“Whilst I understand your response in terms of your process, I do not agree with it and would urge you to reconsider please. Each of these locations are long, straight, wide and fast roads where pedestrians would greatly benefit from at least a safe crossing point in each case.
“We recently had a situation where the crossing patrol was unavailable for a length of time at Fartown which put lives at risk for a prolonged period of time. We urgently need a safe crossing point here due to the width and speed of the road overall and to protect the primary aged children before a serious accident or loss of life occurs.
“Lidget Hill has been the scene of several accidents or near misses and causes huge concern in general. This needs a very urgent review with a safe crossing point installed as a matter of extreme urgency!
“Tyersal Road is again an extremely wide and fast road, despite our attempts to slow traffic down with use of a SID near the shops and another SID currently on order to be placed closer to this junction.
“I would respectfully urge you to reconsider each of these locations as a matter of urgency as each has a very great potential for severe injury or loss of life which is not something any of us want to have happen.”
Council takes ‘evidence-based approach’
A council report published last week said the £761,000 Casualty
Reduction Programme 2020/21 allowed the development of a programme of nine schemes for delivery in 2020/21, plus funding of feasibility work for a further four roads or junctions.
It added that the council has taken a ‘justifiable and evidence-based’ approach:
“Each identified location has been assessed for its deliverability and for their general value for money in terms of being able to deliver realistic casualty reduction improvement.
“The schemes were also compared against the general aims of the
overarching LTP transport themes in order to enable comparison to be made of the range of benefits of each scheme. (These themes are road safety, economic growth, sustainable travel choices, congestion issues and equality of accessibility).“The outcome of supporting this report is a justifiable and evidence-based approach to the identification and listing of a casualty reduction programme that is aimed at reducing recorded injury collisions into the future within Leeds.”
