| Thank you for your e-petition on the Hertfordshire County Council website requesting a new pelican or zebra crossing for Allum Lane, Elstree.In order to consider the request for a formal pedestrian crossing point a feasibility study would need to be funded. This study would check the desired crossing location, outline design criteria such as visibility issues and the most suitable form of crossing related to traffic flows and pedestrian movements. There are currently no proposals for formal crossing facilities in Allum Lane within the Council’s highway work programmes. The costs of zebra and pelican/puffin crossings are significant and if a feasibility study identified a need, the proposal would have to be considered for and achieve priority for funding alongside a wide range of other potential proposals. In general terms, potential sources of funding are:Road Safety Funding The Council's road safety engineering specialists consider all reported personal injury collisions in the County on an annual basis and identify locations at which there are concentrations of reported injury collisions. Taking into account the collision history for the entire County, the Council initiates road safety engineering enhancements, on a prioritised basis, where we identify there are aspects of the road environment that could be modified and/or improved to reduce the potential for future collisions. The current collision data for this location has been checked and there has been 1 fatal collision in the last three years, with other collisions some distance away at the junctions with Barham Avenue and Deacons Hill Road. As such, this location does not meet our intervention levels and therefore will not attract core funding from Hertfordshire County Council’s annual Road Safety budget. Funding from Development Agreements‘Section 106’ funding is funding provided by developers under their planning consent to resolve potential highway issues resulting from their proposed new development. However, in this instance, Hertfordshire County Council has no suitable Section 106 funding for the provision of such a facility. Highway Locality Budgets An alternative source of funding could be through the local County Councillor’s Highway Locality Budget (HLB). County Councillors have £90,000 each financial year to direct towards highway related matters in their division. This can be allocated to traffic/highway related works and studies, such as formal pedestrian crossings. The Assistant Highway Manager for the Watling Division will discuss this issue with the local County Councillor, Caroline Clapper, for potential funding into an initial feasibility study of the kind outlined in the second paragraph above. This would determine whether the facility is justified as a first step towards seeking larger scale funding for installing a pedestrian crossing. |