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Hampstead pilot scheme in New Year
THE decade-long problem of school-run traffic in Hampstead may have inched closer to a solution after councillors gave a watered-down blessing to a bus project on Tuesday night.
The backers of a scheme, which aims to replace 750 daily car journeys with a fleet of buses delivering children to Hampstead’s private schools, said they could now go ahead with a pilot project in January after councillors approved a string of bus parking bays.
But the Town Hall ruled out hiring out its own vehicles to the scheme after months of negotiations failed to overcome budget problems.
Kentish Town parent and businesswoman Marta Baschwitz set up the Transport4Schools project more than two years ago in a bid to solve the air pollution, congestion, and illegal parking problems that result from the school run.
She said: “This will be a very good project for everybody and the pilot is now going be run from the middle to end of January. The council has been very supportive and is still very supportive. But the politicians have been too cautious and the project has been slowed down.
“In a way I prefer to go to a private contractor because I know that Camden Transport does not have the budget or the capacity.”
The Town Hall committee which considers traffic matters, the Executive Environment Sub-group, passed the amended scheme on Tuesday night. Final approval will come from the ruling executive in January.
Environment chief Cllr Chris Knight said: “There have been some comments about the council doing this slowly. The council itself has followed all of its commitments and has done a huge amount of work to support this.”
It follows years of wrangling over the reduction of parking permits that were once issued in large quantities to schools.
Enforcement of parking regulations has been politically contentious, with residents claiming there are hundreds of violations daily which go unpunished, and others maintaining that over-enforcement would put children at risk from hurried drop-offs.
Sixteen private schools have said they are interested in buses that will collect 3 to 11-year-olds from homes in Hampstead, Highgate, Belsize, and Islington. |
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