Woodend’s St Ambrose Primary School community is calling for pedestrian safety works to be prioritised in Macedon Ranges Shire Council’s draft budget.
About 100 people used Walk to School Day as an opportunity to highlight the dangers for students with a lack of safe crossing points in the Woodend school precinct.
More than 150 parents lodged concerns with the council outlining the need to address three dangerous pedestrian points in the precinct earlier this year.
Reports of near misses with traffic at peak school times are becoming more frequent.
Parent Del Lloyd watched in horror as a car swerved to narrowly miss hitting her son as he crossed the road at Brooke Street earlier this year.
“The thing that scares me is that it was just pure luck that the car swerved to miss him. The other thing is that we didn’t do anything wrong – we looked both ways before crossing and we were doing everything we could,” she said.
“It’s only a limited time before it happens again. I’m outraged that there have been a lot of promises but no action. There needs to be an urgent solution.”
The school had a small win in Macedon Ranges Council’s 2021/22 budget with works approved for a wombat crossing at Brooke Street. Plans later changed when a consultant advised against the move due to the proximity of the crest in the street.
The council was in contact with the school to discuss upcoming pedestrian safety works last week.
Council’s director of assets and operations, Shane Walden, said upcoming works included a wombat-style crossing on Urquhart Street and upgrades to several pedestrian road crossing points, including Anslow Street.
“These works are in the current 2021/22 Financial Year budget, to be delivered during the June/July school holiday period,” he told the Express.
The council has also engaged a consulting design and traffic safety engineer to complete a design for pedestrian safety upgrade works for the Brooke and Templeton Street intersection. But this work was not listed in the upcoming budget.
“The consulting engineer has proposed a two-stage approach for this intersection,” Mr Walden said.
“Stage one consists of a vehicle slow point on top of the rise to the east of the Brooke and Templeton Street intersection, and stage two consists of an upgrade to the Brooke and Templeton Street intersection.”
Council advised the school that stage one and two of the project were pending approval in the 2022/23 council budget funding (noting it was not included in the draft budget) and if funded the stages would be delivered over two years.
Speaking to the Express last week, school parent Mike Boudrie said the council was starting to get the message that “people want something done about safety in the area”.
“People have had enough of no action for so long,” he said.
“This is not just a St Ambrose issue. It’s a whole community issue.”
Residents are encouraged to make a submission to the council’s draft budget to have their views on the Woodend school precinct considered as part of the process.
