ABBEY COLLEGE ROAD SAFETY CAMPAIGN

Local Highways Improvement Fund Bid Consultation

Background

For the past few years, Abbey College and our student leaders have been campaigning to highlight road safety concerns and the need for improvements to be made in Ramsey and roads surrounding the school.

The campaign was launched as, while luckily there have been no serious injuries yet, there have been a number of incidents of vehicles mounting pavements, vehicles hitting students/pedestrians, and too many near misses.

This is largely due to the narrow roads through Ramsey being navigated by a growing number of vehicles as our surrounding community grows.

Thanks to the student’s campaign and the support of the community we were able to raise enough money within a matter of days to complete a Road Safety Feasibility Study to explore the best options. We have also held productive meetings with Cambridgeshire County Council’s Highways Authority. Since September, we have held further meetings with representatives from Ramsey Town Council and Cambridgeshire County Council.

Introducing a 20mph speed limit was among the improvements that were suggested to improve the problem and we are pleased that Ramsey has already been shortlisted as a location to implement a 20mph zone by Cambridgeshire County Council. The 20mph zone around the school would go some way to help improve safety for pedestrians, our students, and the wider community. We believe a decision will be made on this shortly.

Our Local Highways Improvement Funding Bid

However, through discussion with various representatives from the County Council, Town Council, and other road safety charities, we believe that more needs to be considered to make a meaningful improvement for pedestrians.

These improvements could include improved and speed activated signage, speed cushions to slow down vehicles, and formal/informal crossing points.

All of these improvements would require a significant amount of funding, and would not be possible to install straight away. However, through our discussions, we have agreed that the installation of Speed Cushions would best support our road safety aims and could be secured through a Local Highways Improvement Funding bid.

Therefore, we are in the process of creating our bid to secure this funding and make these further road safety improvements surrounding the school, and we are now seeking feedback from our local community about our plans and funding bid.

Proposed Speed Cushions

Specifically, our bid proposes to install 6 pairs of Speed Cushions to help slow down vehicles near the Hollow Lane/High Street junction (4 pairs on Hollow Lane; 2 pairs on the High Street junction).

An image of the indicative locations of these Speed Cushions has been shown below. However, even if our funding bid is approved, a further planning application would then be needed to determine the final locations.

You can submit any questions about our road safety campaign or our LHI Funding Bid by emailing .

IMAGE OF POSSIBLE LOCATIONS OF SPEED CUSHIONS ON HOLLOW LANE AND THE HIGH STREET

 Cambridgeshire County Council information on speed cushions can be found here.