Opinion: School zones a fine line between safety and revenue

IT’S difficult to argue against rules intended to help keep kids safe. But it is okay to question some of what happens in the name of road safety if there’s a suspicion revenue raising may be playing a role, writes Margaret Wenham.

ON THE mornings I drive to work, I’m gripped by morbid curiosity as I approach Brisbane Boys’ College on the Moggill Rd major arterial.

SPEED LIMITS DROP FOR PRESTIGIOUS SCHOOL

Will the police be there enforcing, in the two comparatively traffic-free outbound lanes, the 40km/h zone outside the college, I wonder? How many speedgun-wielding coppers will be there? Two? Five? How many cars will be queued up in the slip road to the Toyota dealership, their chastened or cheesed-off drivers awaiting tickets? How many BCC boys are to be seen in the vicinity, especially after 8.30am? One? Two? Zero?

It’s the same when I get to Spring Hill and round the corner from College Rd into Gregory Tce at Boys’ and Girls’ Grammar where there’s another 40km/h zone, and police are also frequently to be spied pinching drivers.

It’s difficult to argue against rules and regulations intended to help keep kids safe. Picture: Andrea Falvo

And, every time I pass through these two zones, I note again that both contain traffic signal-controlled pedestrian crossings and both have off-road and/or alternative road drop-off/pick-up areas – although let me say here that the backed up luxury 4WD and saloons trying to get into the Grammar drop-off areas to disgorge their single student passenger considerably thickens the morning peak-hour congestion from the Normanby fiveways to Gregory Tce.

But I digress. Road-safety measures aimed at protecting children, especially around schools, are probably as old as, well, the most elderly lollipop lady or gent still brandishing their stop sign at the local primary. I’m not sure where or when reduced and enforced speed limits around some schools were first introduced. But all states have them in some form or another and Queensland standardised, with some regional council and other variations, the zone times of 7-9am and 2-4pm in 2012.

It’s difficult to argue against rules and regulations intended to help keep kids safe, and there probably aren’t many of us who have a problem with most of the zones, particularly on the narrower but still busy suburban streets that otherwise have 50 or 60km/h speed limits and where there’s “stop and drop” parking parallel on the street. But there’s nothing wrong with questioning some of what’s going on in the name of road safety if there’s a suspicion, say, that revenue raising may be playing a role, even if it’s a bit part.

And surely there’s nothing wrong with expecting high-school students to possess some road-crossing smarts and to apply them responsibly, given their parents probably banged on about it from day one.

I say this because of what seems to be an increasing number of 40km/h zones on main roads even when, as with BBC and the two Grammars, there are off-road drop-off areas and there appear to be adequate traffic light-controlled crossings, which students arriving on foot or by public transport (and good for them) can use.

So, all this curiosity led me to seek some data and info from Transport and Main Roads about 40km/h zones and it threw up some interesting intel.

For example, TMR gave me a list of twelve 40km/h school zones in the Brisbane City area, which it administers along state-controlled roads: Kenmore, Moggill state schools and Our Lady of the Rosary School on Moggill Rd, Mount Crosby State School on Mount Crosby Rd, Everton Park State School on Old Northern Rd and Everton High on Stafford Rd, Kedron State High School on Park Rd, Mitchelton State High on Samford Rd, Virginia State School on Sandgate Rd, Our Lady of the Assumption on South Pine Rd, Stafford State School on Stafford Rd and St Paul’s at Bald Hills on Strathpine Rd.

the Brisbane City Council already has a few more 40km/h zones in the pipeline including a couple more on major roads. Picture: Steve Pohlner

Presumably all the others are assessed as necessary and installed and maintained by council – including the ones outside BBC and the Grammars.

I wasn’t able to get from TMR specific data for the two zones that particularly piqued my interest, but in the Brisbane City police district, which includes the Grammar Schools’ Gregory Tce zone, 9049 tickets were handed out in the four financial years up to 2016-17 and through to April 30 this year, representing $2,275,572 in fines. The majority of offenders
(90.4 per cent) were caught going up to 20km/h over the 40km/h limit – 2900 were less than 13km/h over and 5281 were between 13 and 20km/h over.

In the Indooroopilly police district in which Brisbane Boys’ College sits, 10,063 drivers were nabbed and issued with fines totalling $2,653,326. Again, the majority (85.5 per cent) were at the lower end of the offending scale with 2904 caught going up to 13km/h over the limit and 5699 caught going between 13 and 20km/h over.

Department of Transport and Main Roads says it has no plans to remove the controversial 40km/h school zone outside Mother of Good Counsel School along busy Cairns arterial Sheridan Street. Picture: Stewart McLean

Earlier this year, a colleague was sent TMR’s Queensland-wide data for school-zone speeding offences for the two years between October 2015 and September 2017. In that period, a total of 50,406 fines were issued and if the offence split is comparable to the data I received, then about 30 per cent of them were for less than
13km/h over, equating to about $2,631,054, and for those caught doing between 13 and 20km/h over, $7,498,791 would have been netted. That’s $10 million right there.

Of course, the simple lesson to take away is don’t speed in school zones. But surely there’s nothing wrong with reminding state and local authorities that revenue should never figure in the where-to-put-a-school-zone-next equation, like it shouldn’t with, for example, unnecessary stop signs (which I’ve banged on about in the past).

By the way, the Brisbane City Council already has a few more 40km/h zones in the pipeline including a couple more on major roads including Ann St in the Valley in front of All Hallows, while every single road around and through State High at South Brisbane is soon to get the school zone treatment.

To which I say “ka-ching”.