Monday 7 June 2010

Redbridge Council, on the side of the bad driver

Redbridge Council acknowledges there’s a problem:

Our experience at schools across the borough suggests that parking by drivers on the school run is increasingly obstructive and potentially dangerous, regardless of the status of the local restrictions.

At the same time this Council absolutely declines to engage with the problem, by either introducing parking restrictions or, where they exist, enforcing them. Redbridge Council has always been deeply reluctant to enforce the pavement parking ban, while at the same time very enthusiastic about seizing pavements for car parking.

Its solution to drivers who park outside schools is that feeble old chestnut ‘education’, a policy which is specially designed to fail by making it look like something is being done while actually encouraging the status quo by doing nothing effective.

“This is something where schools have a major role to play in terms of educating parents and pupils and our Road Safety Officers will continue to work with schools to encourage less car journeys.”

Redbridge is a car sick borough, considerably more hostile to cycling and walking than even Waltham Forest.

Oh, and for fantasists and dreamers it’s a biking borough.