Perth Voice Interactive

PARENTS are worried $200,000 allocated for a safe crossing on Guildford Road could be sabotaged because of a funding stoush on Bayswater council

The road is so dangerous to cross that several parents refuse to walk their kids to local schools and are driving instead, despite the short distance.

Karen Bedell crosses Guildford Road six times a day to walk her daughter and son to St Columba’s primary school and pre-kindy.

“I must admit it’s an absolute nightmare to cross, but I want my kids to get some exercise and walk to school,” she says.

“You’re perched on a tiny median strip and trucks and cars are shooting by. It’s not ideal.

“There used to be a lollipop man on Guildford Road but he was removed about five years ago because it was so dangerous.

“I refuse to make a five-minute car journey when we live so close by.”

“There used to be a lollipop man on Guildford Road but he was removed about five years ago because it was so dangerous.”

Cr Mike Anderton is fuming the council pledged the crossing money to the WA main roads department, saying it’s a state government responsibility. Numerous attempts to win state funding for the project, including a petition to the parliament in 2010, had failed.

In 2013 the department rejected a request from the primary school, claiming not enough people would use a crossing.

“I was shocked to hear that we had pledged $200,000 to the state government, on the eve of the budget, to do work they should be paying for,” he fumed.

He tried but failed to remove the funding from the budget but parents remain nervous as he’s intimated he’ll seek a formal rescission.

Bayswater primary P&C president Stephanie Baily says children’s safety comes before council and state government funding spats.

“Just last week a bus driver pulled his bus across the lanes of traffic so that we could safely make it to the centre island,” a local mum recently wrote.

“This was after there had been three light changes without us successfully being able to make it to the middle.

“We would walk more often if it was safer to do so as the children really enjoy the experience.”

Ms Baily plans to write to WA transport minister Dean Nalder to keep pressure on the government to approve the crossing.

by STEPHEN POLLOCK