Richmond High School welcomed its first students in January 2018.
The school comprises an academic precinct on Griffith Street and a sports precinct on Gleadell Street.
The catchment zone for the school allows for travel distances of up to 2 km.
Problems
Richmond High School faces two key issues:
- Students need a safe way to travel up to 2 km to get to the school
- Students need a safe way to walk between the academic campus and the sports campus
Solutions
To enable students to travel safely and independently to school, VicRoads and the City of Yarra should collaborate to build a network of protected footpaths and protected bicycle lanes in the catchment zone. Consistent with the concept of a street hierarchy, all nominated arterials and key access streets in the catchment zone should have protected bicycle lanes, including:
- East-west: Victoria Street, Bridge Road, Swan Street, Highett Street
- North-south: Church Street, Burnley Street, Lennox Street, Coppin Street
Regarding streets controlled by the City of Yarra, the highest priority is a bicycle boulevard along Coppin Street, linking the Yarra Trail shared path to the existing bicycle lane on Highett Street.
Streets Alive Yarra made a formal submission on safe routes to Richmond High School, which can be downloaded as a PDF:
Additional benefits
This infrastructure would also help everybody else who travels to the Gleadell Street sports and recreation precinct, including visitors to:
- Citizens Park, Lynall Hall School, Richmond Pool and Recreation Centre, Leo Berry Gym, Richmond Bowls Club, and
- Richmond Town Hall and shops on Bridge Road.
To enable students to travel safely between the two campuses, Palmer Street should be extended through to Gleadell Street, and Gleadell Street should be calmed to a 10 km/h shared zone, with vehicle access retained for properties in the street (e.g. a school bus in front of the swimming pool) but dissuading through traffic.
This infrastructure would also benefit users of the Gleadell Street Market and Citizens Park. Further information is available at Gleadell Street and at gogleadell.com.
Local champion
Your local champion for Richmond High School is Marlou – a student at the school. View all of Streets Alive Yarra’s champions on our supporters page.
I love riding my bike to school and often arrange to meet up with a cycle buddy along the way. I can get all over Richmond very quickly after school if I need to as well. I am concerned about cars double parking and using bike lanes as a waiting bay. I find this very unsafe because when the cars block the bike lane, it means I have to go around the cars. Also, drivers don’t see bikes very well and if they all of a sudden swerve into the bike lane, people riding bikes are in big danger and could get hit. It would be great if Yarra Council could do more to highlight the issue of cars blocking bike lanes to stop and wait for people – maybe advertising and on social media.
Marlou