We have received requests for the council to look at the viability of an additional pedestrian crossing in the Perth Road shopping area.
The school catchment areas in the West End were altered in 2022 meaning that this area was moved from Victoria Park’s catchment area to Blackness’s.
As a result a stream of additional children and their parents/carers walk along the south side of Perth Road to eventually cross at Sainsbury’s.
The problem is navigating the south side of Perth Road’s pavements with young children – the pavement is very narrow indeed.
We therefore asked the council's road safety team about the viability of a further pedestrian crossing is to the east – eg towards Thomson Street - and have received the following initial feedback from the Senior Engineer (Traffic & Road Safety) :
"I'll have this location added to our list of Traffic Surveys.
Initial thoughts however are that this is unlikely as the pedestrian crossing at Sainsbury's is only 100m west of Thomson Street. We wouldn't have another one so close to an existing one.
I know Perth Road very well and there are our difficulties which limit suitable crossing location such as the numerous under pavement basements, tightly packed utilities within the footways, reinforced concrete rafts within the carriageways from the old days of the trams. To compound this, we have limited useable width on the Perth Road. We are so limited in width from existing buildings that there are narrow footways in places, a trade-off between providing useable carriageway width to maintain two-way traffic flow and adequate footway width for pedestrians.
From memory I'm pretty sure this was why the pedestrian crossing at Sainsbury's was installed where it is because of the above issues.
Once I receive the traffic surveys, I will get back to you with our findings.