Falcon Primary parents call for safe school crossings

There is currently no designated crosswalks to cross the highway near the school, the closest one being located near the Miami Plaza shopping centre.

Pleasant Grove resident Kara Stockley said she has received calls from her daughters being stuck in the median strip between both directions before, unable to cross to the other side for up to 10 minutes.

“My girls are at the age now where they are old enough to walk to school so I’ve started letting them walk to school,” Ms Stockley said.

“They find that they can get from one side of Old Coast Road to the middle OK, because obviously the traffic is going north but they get stuck there for five, ten minutes sometimes.

“Sometimes they ring me on my mobile ‘mum, we can’t get across the road’.”

She said another student had also been stuck in the white line between two lanes, unable to walk safely to the median strip.

Ms Stockley is not the only parent concerned about their children’s safety.

Pleasant Grove resident Bronwyn Dodd won’t let her nine and six-year-old children ride to school.

“Initially for me I would love for the kids to be able to have the security of riding to school, I think it’s something fun,” she said.

“Nowadays we helicopter our kids so it makes it really hard to do those things that we used to do as children ourselves, so I wanted to give them the security of being able to cross the highway safely. 

“But because it’s fast, 90km, and there’s no designated crosswalks it makes it really hard to have that security.”

Ms Dodd decided to post her thoughts on the issue in one of the school’s Facebook page and she said she was shocked to find out how many other parents were concerned about the same issue.

The school’s P&C organised a meeting with member for Dawesville Zak Kirkup on Thursday afternoon for parents to share their concerns.

At the meeting, parents said a manned crossing just north of the intersection of Duke Street and Old Coast Road would not only benefit school children, but also surfers going to Avalon Beach and bus commuters. 

They said Falcon Primary students weren’t the only students in the area having to cross the busy highway, with high school students in the area catching the bus into town. 

Mr Kirkup said he had already identified two more crossings along Old Coast Road which needed to be improved in Perseverance Boulevard and Wattleglen Avenue.

“I think the population has changed so much in recent years here, all across the island as I would call it, and I think there’s a good opportunity now where we’ve identified a couple of sites for us to go to the transport minister, go to the state government and see what we can do to make sure these crossings are made safer for not just kids who go to school but for the community in general,” he said.