Campaign launched to raise awareness about ‘extremely dangerous’ crossing on busy Sheffield road

The junction between Carter Knowle Road and Ecclesall Road South, just in front of the Prince of Wales pub, has been without a crossing for decades – a resident said he had walked down the road in the 1960s and the situation had only worsened over the years.

Some residents, campaigners and a local ward council member have had enough of it and are calling Sheffield Council to do something about it.

Cllr Peter Gilbert, a ward councillor in Ecclesall, said the junction was awful for pedestrians even though Sheffield Council recently declared the city as a pedestrian-friendly city after a motion passed in the chamber.

But he warned that if crossings weren’t properly thought out and forced people to cross elsewhere to avoid it, then Sheffield was not a pedestrian-friendly city.

He said: “Local residents are out here today to send a message that we want the council to take action on this junction and junctions like it all across the city to make them safe for pedestrians.

“Everybody is a pedestrian at one point in their journey.”

Cllr Gilbert said he had raised this with the council and there is currently the A625 Safer Road Scheme that is about £1.6million the council got from central government to make Ecclesall Road safer.

He said he welcomed the new safe crossing across the junction between Psalter Lane and Ecclesall Road which has been a “very scary crossing point”.

However, he said the junction between Carter Knowle Road and Ecclesall Road has once again been ignored.

Tessa Lupton, a local resident and a Green Party activist, told the Local Democracy Reporting Service (LDRS) she was walking down from Ringinglow Road and she was “mapping out” how she was supposed to get to the Prince of Wales and meet everybody.

She said: “It’s scary. If I was coming down with my children, I would be worried about their safety.”

She added there was no safe time at all to cross the junction and she raised concerns for visually impaired people who have some help on the pavement in tactile paving but “how on earth would they have a hope in crossing this road safely”.

Adam Bull, a 10-year-old boy living close to the junction, said he would not cross the road by himself as cars are coming from both directions and there was no option he could think of crossing this road safely.

He added that when one light is red and the other one is green “it’s not a safe time to cross it at all”.

“It’s just extremely dangerous to try and cross it”, Adam said.

Tom Bull, Adam’s dad, said he wants his children to go out and be more independent, and do things but “things like this are the reason they don’t”.

Cllr Ben Miskell, the chair of the transport regeneration and climate policy committee at Sheffield City Council, told the LDRS: “We have ambitious plans to reduce the number of people killed or seriously injured on Sheffield’s roads to zero and the installation of pedestrian crossings plays a role in that plan even if they affect journey times for traffic travelling through the area.

“We are in the process of targeting the most dangerous locations across the city and installing measures to make them as safe as possible for people to be able to walk or cycle. We want Sheffield to be a city where people have a choice in how they get around and making our roads and pavements as safe as possible will be key to achieving that.

“I understand the concerns of residents along Carter Knowle Road and Ecclesall Road South and the council’s officers will be assessing that location as soon as possible to see how safety can be improved.”