Dear Councillor
I am very concerned that it is difficult for me and other residents to cross the road at INSERT NAME OF LOCATION – BE AS EXACT AS POSSIBLE. It is INSERT ROUGH DISTANCE e.g. 400 metres to the nearest existing crossing. I know that the Council uses a formula to decide where to put in new crossings. This formula means that in the main only really busy roads get crossings. In 2013/14 Council reports that it spent from its main capital budget only around £230,000 on new stand-alone crossings for which it installed 3 new puffin crossings and 7 refuges. Do you really think this is enough? In contrast, the 2014/15 budget for new cycling schemes is almost £1.5 million. The Council’s own transport strategy puts pedestrians first, and the Active Travel Action Plan says it wants more people to walk by making roads safer and walking journeys more connected. That will only happen if there are more crossings, but if you stick with the national formula and this tiny budget then there will only be a trickle of new crossings every year.
In other areas like buses, cycling and speed limits, the Council has not followed a national formula to decide what to build. It does not wait until there are hundreds of cyclists before building a bike path; it puts in bus lanes at places where there are not major delays to buses; it did not wait until almost everyone was driving slowly before it decided to introduce a 20mph speed limit. So why should it be any different for pedestrian crossings? The Council needs a policy-led approach to installing crossings – if it really wants to encourage more walking like it says it does, it needs to install more crossings to make people feel safer walking. Please explain to me when you are going to instruct your officers to make this change, when and by how much you will increase the budget for pedestrian crossings, and therefore when you will install a crossing where I need it, and others where others need them.