Learners had another narrow escape when a driver, trying to swerve through a scholar patrol boom, missed the learners but broke the boom.

Two weeks ago, an accident at the same spot also narrowly missed learners at the crossing when a car collided with two other vehicles that had stopped for the boom.

Richard Small, a Portland Neighbourhood Watch member who assists at the signallised crossing every morning, sent TygerBurger pics of the broken boom and renewed his calls for a speed hump and a more consistent law enforcement presence at the crossing.

Small, one of several neighbourhood watch members who assists at the crossing every morning, is fearful that authorities will only pay attention to their pleas after a child has been killed there. He has emailed the City and the subcouncil dozens of times over the years and has been repeatedly told that the road is a main arterial and therefore not eligible for a speed hump.

Speed camera

The City’s traffic services have, however, said they have started investigations for a speed camera near the site.

But this has not satisfied Small who says the three to six month investigation period is problematic and something that he has been told before without any visible results.

“This is the nitty gritty things that they need to see,” he said, adding that he has emailed the picture of the broken boom, lamenting that he was not quick enough to get a picture of the car’s licence plate as it sped away.

“And this three months to six months, after six months then those people are no longer there, they’ve got other positions, and then new people are there and they don’t know about it,” he said, speaking from experience of having to resend the same information to the City countless times over the years. “The previous time, nobody followed up on that. They promised but never delivered. They need to come closer with two to three months. Six months is too long to sit around a table and discuss this.”

He is now planning on creating an online petition.

City’s response

The morning after the boom was broken, TygerBurger contacted the City and sent the images of the broken booms. We asked if traffic flow was considered more important than children’s lives?

Traffic services responded by sending out vehicles to patrol the site on Friday morning.

Small said that morning, two vehicles were pulled over and fined for trying to bypass the booms.

TygerBurger emailed the City again to confirm if this was correct but they did not reply by the time the paper went to print.

In an earlier email, traffic services’ spokesperson Kevin Jacobs cautioned that the vehicles could not be committed to the site more permanently.

“The City’s Traffic Services receives thousands of complaints monthly about traffic transgressions. Given the size of the metro, the volume of complaints and the many demands on our service, officers are not always able to respond immediately or be static at one specific location. The City’s Traffic Service has taken note of the complaint and will initiate speed enforcement in the area,” he said.

The response from Rob Quintas, the City’s Mayco member for urban mobility, remained the same however, albeit worded differently: “There is already an existing signalised intersection with traffic signals. Wespoort Drive is a higher order route that carries a high volume of traffic, meaning, the City cannot install more traffic calming measures along this route. The City considers all requests for traffic calming in terms of its Traffic Calming Policy. Although the policy has a current focus on schools, the policy also considers the classification of the routes in question and generally does not support the introduction of raised calming measures on higher order mobility routes.”

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