About two months ago, the Labour Council introduced School Streets; all motor vehicles except those belonging to residents are banned from using them 08:00-09:30 & 2:00-4:00pm Monday - Friday (and apparently even during school holidays), and the nearest example in Purley is Montpelier Road.
I can understand the logic of restricting vehicles if the road is a byroad which doesn't really go anywhere and if there are reasonably short alternative vehicle routes. However, alternative routes are usually MUCH longer than the obvious straight line route, so vehicles are forced to drive longer distances, and thus spew out more pollution and potentially cause more congestion elsewhere - is this really desirable? And why do the restrictions still apply during school holidays when there won't be large numbers of children on the streets?
There's also the problem of poor signage; several Purley residents have complained to me recently about getting a ticket for driving through Haling Road which is the Y-shaped road adjacent to the South Croydon Esso petrol station on Brighton Road. The problem is that the U-shaped part of the road is not a school street, so drivers enter it from Brighton Road and then fail to notice the signs as they turn East into the straight part of the road. The official signs are in position, but they're so close to the start of the school street that drivers don't see them; hopefully this article will make everyone more aware of this new trap for the unwary motorist. .
