Issues with the Crossing on Egley Road

On Wednesday 19th September 2018 two of our students were injured in an accident on the Egley Road crossing outside school. Both were hospitalised but thankfully they are both recovered.

Issues identified with the crossing include

  • It has not been sized to meet the needs of the school at start and end times. HVS is a local school for local children with a high proportion of students who arrive on foot, bicycle or scooter, but the crossing was not sized to take that into account. This means the central reservation is too small, and there is inadequate provision on the eastern side for students to wait safely at the crossing point.
  • The timing of the green man signal is very short, especially on the northbound carriageway
  • The visibility of the red/green man to signal it is safe to cross is extremely poor. There is no sign straight across the road, and the positioning of the signs on the same side of the road are poor and easily obscured when the crossing is full.
  • There are no beeps on the crossing. This is because of the two separate crossings across each carriageway in close proximity, which would mean anyone who is sight impaired could not distinguish which crossing the beep related to.

We also feel the speed limit on that stretch of road should be 30mph.

Following the accident some changes were made to the timing on the crossing. The intelligent crossing mechanism is recognising when there is high demand on the crossing, and lengthening the period that the traffic lights are on red to enable anyone already crossing to complete their crossing safely.

Mrs Davies and Mrs O’Reilly met with representatives from Surrey Highways, Surrey Police, Surrey County Council, Woking Borough Council, Willmott Dixon and Gyoury Self on Wednesday 26th September 2018 to review the operation of the crossing and talk through the issues. The meeting was constructive and a set of actions were agreed.

An engineer from Telent attended the crossing on 10th and 11th October 2018 to validate the operation and following input from the school he made some changes to the timing and sequence. Mrs Davies and Mrs O’Reilly met with representatives of Surrey Highways on 19th October 2018 to review the impact and were pleased to note that there is a greater time to cross and students have to wait for less time in the central reservation, meaning the reservation does not get over crowded. We welcome all of these changes which will improve safety for our students.

Further actions have been noted at the crossing to improve the response to pedestrian demand. Consideration is now being given to improving the waiting area on the east side of the road, and to increasing capacity of the crossing when we add further year groups.

If you want to help us get changes to the junction to improve safety for our students you can contact Surrey Highways to express your concerns at highways@surreycc.gov.uk and Woking Borough Council, who are responsible for the overall development, at customers@woking.gov.uk

Surrey Highways have also now updated their database to include the Egley Road crossing so you can also register your concern online here

We will keep parents updated with progress. Thank you for your support.