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A protest campaign over poor walking and cycling safety


Effective road safety planning: what should be happening

What the vision should be
Road safety planning and policing: what we have a right to expect
Poor Merseyside road casualties should be considered
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Options that should be considered

Merseyside road safety failures

Merseyside / national road safety failures

Merseyside road safety concerns

So-Mo project on pedestrian casualties

Merseyside road safety improvements

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Liverpool City Region Road Safety Strategy 2017-2020

The Strategy was adopted at the Liverpool City Region Combined Authority meeting in July 2017.

It can be downloaded from here.


The Strategy is a very poor document.

The stated vision is good, i.e. that there will be
A reduction in the numbers of those killed and seriously injured to fewer than 400 by 2020, with the ultimate vision of a future where no-one is killed on Merseyside's roads and the injury rate is reduced.
but it does not contain measures that will achieve that target reduction in casualties.

A joint letter expressing serious concerns has been sent to the Police and Crime Commissioner (Jane Kennedy) and the Metro Mayor (Steve Rotheram) from Wirral Pedestrians Association, Merseyside cycling Campaign and Liverpool Pedestrians - see here - but this has not resulted in any improvement in the strategy. Effectively, the concerns have been ignored.

Concerns include:
  • the lack of consultation in producing the Strategy
  • the poverty of aspiration displayed by the Strategy - there is a stated aspiration to reduce casualties but no apparent aspiration to reduce the dominance of motor vehicles on our roads
  • the exclusion of child pedestrians from the groups that have been identified as areas of concern - ignoring the poor position of Merseyside in having the second worst child pedestrian rate of KSIs per 100,000 children [1]
  • the emphasis on blaming road users rather than reducing road danger
  • the small number of new measures, insufficient to lead to the targets set out
  • the lack of any reference to 20mph speed limits - in comparison, Bristol's plan [2] has 7 mentions of 20mph limits, and the Transport for London road safety plan (2013) had 23.

References

[1] See https://wacm.org.uk/28.html. The figures are for 2012-2016 are that Merseyside had a rate 77% above the national average.

[2] Bristol City Council (2015) A Safe System Approach to Road Safety in Bristol: A Ten Year Plan 2015-2024 download from here




Last updated: 16 Dec 2018