A CONGESTION charge for Stratford has been mooted by a group of award-winning students.
The proposal came out of a competition run by the Office for National Statistics, which saw a team of King Edward VI pupils come away with the top prize.
Four of the school’s maths whizzes, Moeez Salman, Darshan Mistry, Rohan Srirangham and Bilal Khan, claimed first place in the Office for National Statistics Data Challenge with their project to tackle the area’s traffic congestion.
The King Edward VI pupils impressed the judges with their comparison of rush-hour traffic in St Alphege in Solihull with Guildhall and Bridgetown in Stratford.
The team found that despite Stratford’s smaller population, traffic remained high due to tourism, limited remote work, and reliance on few main roads. Their analysis of pre- and post-pandemic population and traffic data revealed that population growth in Stratford was also a contributing factor, which led them to recommend a targeted congestion charge in Stratford’s busiest zones, based on successful congestion schemes like London’s.
The King Edward VI team said: “We are incredibly grateful for the opportunity to participate in this competition and are especially proud to have won overall. This achievement reflects the hard work, dedication, and collaboration of our entire team. Throughout the competition, we developed invaluable skills and gained meaningful experience that will have a lasting impact beyond this success.”
The challenge, which saw hundreds of students age 16 to 18 take part, wrapped up at a virtual event on Tuesday January 13 where all winners were announced.
The winning team from King Edward VI will also receive a signed letter of commendation from the ONS to support their university or job applications and a £250 voucher for their school.
The students were able to submit a project under one of four subject areas – maths, business studies, sociology and geography. In addition to being the overall winner, the King Edward VI pupils were also the winners of the maths category.
A Warwickshire County Council spokesperson said it continued to review the full range of traffic management tools available to highway authorities, but there were no active plans to pursue a congestion charge in Stratford or any other part of Warwickshire at the current time.
