Request a pedestrian crossing

The crossings can be simple, such as dropped kerbs, central refuges, zebra, puffin or toucan crossings. Pedestrian crossings built into traffic light signalled junctions are handled differently from standalone facilities such as these mentioned above.

Request a pedestrian crossing

Pedestrian crossings are very expensive and the cost of surveying the proposed site is also very high. In view of this, we ask that all requests for pedestrian crossings are channelled through your town or parish council.  If your council supports the proposal we ask that they write to the Network Traffic Control Team.

The town or parish council should undertake a local community exercise to engage with residents in order to receive a wide-range of feedback on the proposal.

The request letter should contain as much information as possible, such as the location, for example outside the post office on the high street, the sorts of difficulties local people are experiencing in crossing at this site, any local knowledge on wheelchair users and other vulnerable people who would benefit from a crossing in this position.

Guidance Notes - Pedestrian Crossing Request (pdf, 15kb) (opens in a new window)

Example site assessment record (pdf, 12kb) (opens in a new window)

What happens next?

The county council will acknowledge receipt of your town or parish council's request.

The site will be assessed by an experienced senior traffic engineer and they will determine if the proposal technically justifies going forward for the full and costly survey.

If the site does not justify going forward, reasons for this will be reported back to the town or parish council.

If adjudged suitable, the request moves into the next phase - a full survey of the site.

This can be a lengthy process but town and parish councils will be able to contact an officer at Dorset County Council to seek updates and likewise councils will be kept informed of the progress of their schemes.

What does the full survey entail?

The survey takes into account a lot of data collection, such as numbers of people crossing 50 metres either side of the requested location (100 metres in total), in that total how many children, people over 65 years old, level of mobility and those who are visually impaired, how much traffic is passing that point on the road, and of those; the number of LGVs, cars, etc, and whether there have been any accidents involving pedestrians.

Assessing the results

The data collected is assessed and a rank order will be given to your site.

Once a year we will report all our findings to the Roads and Rights of Way Committee informing them of the position of your request and that of others we have surveyed that year. We shall ask that the committee scrutinise our recommendations and that they in turn seek that the rank order of pedestrian crossing requests is ratified by the county council's Cabinet members.

So do we get our crossing and when?

What you get and when you get it is the difficult bit. The council's engineers will determine what is the most appropriate and safe thing to do for your particular situation. The right answer may be to do nothing or to provide a new state of the art puffin pedestrian crossing or a central refuge could be answer.

All sites are different and need their own individual solution, however the county council only has funds to carry out a small number of requests received. Therefore, surveyed sites will be placed on a list in priority rank order. The available budget and the type of schemes required will determine how quickly we can work down the list.

It is important to realise that some requests may take years before they reach the top of the list. Once the list has been reported to committee the list will be closed for that reporting year. Any new requests for pedestrian crossings will not be rank ordered until the list is reopened the following financial year.

It is at this point your site could go up the list or if higher rank schemes have been received during the intervening period, it could stay at the same position or slip down the rank order.

Please also note that in the current economic climate we have to carefully prioritise all requests in order that we provide those schemes that will have a genuine significant impact on increasing safety for pedestrians.

• Name: Network Traffic Control Team
  Email: networktrafficcontrol@dorsetcc.gov.uk
  Tel: 01305 225026
  Fax: 01305 224835
  Full details for Network Traffic Control Team