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To: ACT Government

Safe Streets to School in Canberra

Please separate our kids from fast-moving traffic so they can walk or ride to school safely. We are asking that within 2km of every school in the ACT there are:

- Convenient pedestrian priority crossings and footpaths on streets with speed limits of 40km/h and higher

or

- 30km/h speed limits for streets where there are no pedestrian priority crossings or footpaths

Why is this important?

Children in the ACT deserve to safely walk or ride to school (or to public transport to get to school).

Walking or riding to school improves children's fitness and independence. However, they are often driven over short distances to school because parents perceive that their child's journey to school is unsafe for part or the whole of the journey. As a result, our streets are subject to tens of thousands more car trips every year, making them even less safe and clogging up roads with unnecessary traffic during morning drop-off and afternoon pick-up.

Streets without footpaths and crossings with speed limits higher than 30km/h are not considered safe under the Safe System approach used in Australia and the ACT. The Safe System approach is the basis for and at the heart of all ACT Government transport policy making and efforts to improve road safety and achieve Vision Zero for deaths and serious injuries on our roads.

Why we need Safe Streets to School:

- Research shows that children cannot judge gaps in traffic consistently when cars go faster than 30km/h to safely cross a street

- On streets where there are no footpaths and crossings, reducing the car speed to 30km/h would prevent most accidents: the stopping distance for a car traveling 30km/h is 13m. Stopping distance for a car traveling 50km/h is 37m. The risk of death or serious injury if hit at 30km/h is less than 10%; compared to 90% if hit at 50km/h. It is an unreasonable risk to place our children in harms way on their journey to school.

Safe Streets to School will help:
- achieve each of the four goals of the ACT Road Safety Strategy 2020-2025
- make Canberra a healthy, active and inclusive city, including being Australia’s most walkable city
- the ACT reach its legislated target of zero net greenhouse gas emissions by 2045, because it will help people if they feel safe enough to choose active travel and so reduce greenhouse gas emissions from transport.

Our children deserve the right to walk to school (or public transport to get to school), so they can have a healthy and safe future. We do not believe it is fair to wait for an accident to happen and our children to get injured or killed before they can walk or ride safely. Please make our streets to school safe now.

How it will be delivered

Transport Canberra and City Services Directorate is responsible for implementing the ACT Road Safety Strategy 2020-2025 and the ACT Road Safety Action Plan 2020-2023.

Australian Capital Territory, Australia

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Updates

2023-03-22 07:13:09 +1100

50 signatures reached

2022-02-23 10:50:44 +1100

25 signatures reached

2021-10-26 15:54:05 +1100

10 signatures reached