A St Albans father has started a petition to install extra crossings at the junction outside The Ancient Briton on Harpenden Road.

Herts Advertiser: Concerned parent Gregor Park is calling for a diagonal crossing at the Harvester Junction on Harpenden Road to help school children on the school run. Picture: DANNY LOOConcerned parent Gregor Park is calling for a diagonal crossing at the Harvester Junction on Harpenden Road to help school children on the school run. Picture: DANNY LOO (Image: ©2018 Danny Loo Photography - all rights reserved)

Gregor Park, of Waverley Road, has a daughter who uses the crossing to attend St Albans Girls’ School (STAGS) and has noticed people crossing diagonally over the junction connecting Harpenden Road, Batchwood Drive and Beech Road.

He said: “I was stopped at the lights at about school pick-up time and I was shocked by how many people walked straight across. It’s a potentially dangerous crossing and you have to do it in two stages, as if you try and cross diagonally, it changes before you can get to the other side.

“Someone said they thought it was perfectly safe when the light goes green to walk across the middle, which I would not advise my daughter to do as I do not want her ending up in the middle of the road.

“It seems we have a crossing which is not doing its job.”

He believes the marked diagonal crossing would benefit pupils at STAGS and Garden Fields Primary School and people living on Ellis Fields, Old Harpenden Road and Beech Road.

The diagonal crossing would also, in Mr Park’s eyes, help drivers as it would mean not be waiting twice in quick succession for people to cross in two stages.

He said: “If you increase the time the green light stays on for, people would still walk across diagonally. I just thought it seemed more sensible to put a marked crossing where people can go diagonally across as people have started doing.”

He is petitioning Herts county council and, at the time of writing, had already attracted 39 signatures in a week.

County councillor Roma Mills, for St Albans North, said: “I’m looking into it and I’ve asked the officers to look at it in terms of safety and road traffic. A lot of work went into making that junction safe and try and reduce the huge block of traffic from Harpenden which you get at that junction at peak times.

“You are, on occasion, going to have to cross twice, so I will have to weigh the inconvenience of that with how safe it would be to cross a very wide junction diagonally.”

To see the petition, visit tinyurl.com/yd5n6ayh