A tragic accident on a ‘cycle street’ has led Tervuren parents to wonder how safe their little ones are when cycling to school. The €175,000 ‘cycle streets’ and ‘cycle suggestion paths’, painted on the main streets in Vossem and Tervuren, were suppose to solve traffic worries for Tervuren parents.
“We’re literally giving cyclists a place on the road. In this way, we’re trying to achieve a better balance between the amount of public space used for cars on one hand, and vulnerable road users on the other,” said Peters when announcing plans worth €175,000 for ‘cycle streets’ and ‘cycle suggestion paths’ in Vossem and Tervuren center. “We’re aiming to improve traffic safety around schools as effectively and quickly as possible. Parents should be able to let their children go to school by bike with peace of mind,” said Eyskens.
That was in a joint statement sent out to journalists after town grandees approved the €175,000 plans to paint streets in Vossem and Tervuren.
Can children really cycle to school safely in our town amidst lorries and heavy traffic?
An accident earlier this week resulted in the death of a seven-year-old boy, crushed on a supposedly safe fietsstraat by a lorry. The boy was coming back from school with his mother on a cargo bike. The tragic accident in Zwevegem, a small town near Kortrijk, similar in size to Tervuren, raises serious doubts among Tervuren parents about the safety and suitability of so-called ‘cycle streets’ and ‘cycle suggestion paths’. Can children really cycle to school safely in our town amidst such heavy traffic?
Signs were painted on Tervuren’s Brusselsesteenweg late last year to indicate the change of status to a cycle street. At the busier end, light brown paint was used to indicate that the road is now a ‘cycle suggestion path’. The aim is to make cycling to school both safer and more enjoyable for children.
Fietsersbond remained unconvinced and has called for more clarity, especially on Brusselsesteenweg, where more than 100,000 cars and nearly 10,000 trucks pass monthly. Trucks have no place in a cycle street, says the Fietsersbond. Complaints are common in cycle streets when there’s too much traffic.
Action group Graag Traag is hoping that local politicians take action and ensure safety for children cycling to school in Tervuren. “These bicycle lanes can have an effect on traffic speed. That doesn’t solve all the problems, that’s for sure,” said Graag Traag.
Latest Flemish statistics indicate that only 42 percent of Tervuren residents consider the route to school safe. Feeling unsafe may be reflected in fairly stagnant percentages of persons cycling to school or work in Tervuren, at 14% in 2023 and 13% in 2017. In the same period, cycling to work or school shot up 31.25% in the whole of Flanders.
