Two mums are fighting for urgent improvements to a busy road, saying the lives of children are being put at risk.

About 100 youngsters aged four to 11 who live on the Great Easthall Estate attend Lansdowne Primary, but for many of them the journey to school involves a treacherous crossing.

Parents and pupils have to emerge from a poorly maintained footpath from Easton Drive on to Tonge Road, Murston, where cars travel at 60mph towards Church Road and 30mph in the other direction, with no indication to motorists they are using the route.

Then they have to negotiate rubble, glass and mud as they walk under the railway bridge towards Peel Drive.

Kent County Council says it has designed a scheme which includes narrowing Tonge Road at the crossing place; widening the footpath between Tonge Road and Peel Drive for shared use by pedestrians and cyclists; and providing street lighting on the path.

It also includes removing vegetation on the north side of Tonge Road to improve visibility; providing a new street lighting column on the new kerb build-out; extending the 30mph speed limit; and bollards at both ends to prevent use of the path by vehicles.

Funding has been provided from planning obligations for the development, but work has not yet started due to on going negotiations surrounding private land required for the scheme.

Kerry Capes, whose two children, Harriet, seven, and Henry, five, attend Lansdowne, and Senga Grimwade, whose five-year-old son Harrison is also a pupil there, fear someone could be killed before anything is done.

As a result they are leading a campaign, with the help of the local Labour group, calling upon Swale Joint Transportation Board to ensure the plans are carried out as a matter of urgency.

So far 280 people have signed a petition.

The signatures were collected at the school on Wednesday last week and by knocking on residents’ doors on Sunday. It will be submitted to the committee before it meets on March 9.

Mrs Capes, of Clifford Crescent, said: “Change needs to happen before it’s too late.”

For details on how to sign the petition, visit the Facebook group Feedback on Access Via Railway Bridge Linking Tonge Road to Peel Drive.