New School Streets are coming to Monmouthshire!
Road Safety at Gilwern, Undy and Castle Park Primary Schools
Over the last year Monmouthshire County Council have worked with these schools to create an Active Travel School Plan personalised for the school to help families and staff travel more actively and support them in carrying out the steps. These actions are based around the problems found at the school. For example, all of these schools demonstrated congestion outside the school, particularly the immediate area outside of the school gates.
As part of the Active Travel School Plan, the schools have been working with Monmouthshire Council to implement a School Street.
A School Street is a street near a school where traffic is restricted at the beginning and end of the school day. The times that there will be a School Street are from 8:30am to 9:15am and 2:45pm to 3:45pm, Monday to Friday, term time only. Affected residents will be free to come and go at these times.
Please note that during these times restrictions will be in place and only valid users such as residents, blue badge holders, buses including MCC school transport and essential deliveries will be permitted.
Why is this happening?
- Creating Safe and Happy Communities –The most common cause of death for children between the ages of five and 14 years is being hit by a vehicle.
- Responding to the climate emergency
- Clean Air – Roadtraffic is the biggest cause of air pollution. Children suffer the most from poor quality air.
- Encourages Active Travel – leading to better mental and physical health.
One of the ways to change the way people travel is to encourage people to walk and cycle more. Walking and cycling are the cleanest, healthiest, and cheapest ways of travelling. For many shorter journeys they can also be the quickest, which is often the case for the school run.
Who will be allowed access?
- Residents for their own vehicles.
- Blue Badge holders requiring access to the school.
- Essential deliveries to homes and the school.
How will the school street be monitored?
Working in partnership with Vivacity, sensors have already been in place for a few months. These sensors will remain active allowing us to monitor the impact of the school street closure.
What does it mean for me?
| If your family travel actively already: | If your family sometimes travel by car: |
|---|---|
| Continue to travel as you usually do. Please remember there may still be some vehicular traffic outside of the schools. | Can you begin to walk, cycle or scoot from home? Even if you try once or twice a week?If your home is too far, could you park safely further away and walk the last 10 minutes? This will also increase yours and your children’s exercise each day. Could your child travel part of the way independently? |
The School Street will create a safer environment for your children and the school community by reducing the number of vehicles travelling past the school. We are really excited that your school will have a School Street and will be a safer place to get to. Please help us keep it safe by travelling as actively as you can.