The campaign has already split Bathurst Regional Council and also threatens to become a bugbear for local member Paul Toole.

The parents’ request seems a simple one: to have a pedestrian crossing installed on Browning Street to make it safer for their children – who have a range of disabilities – to get to school.

But getting either council or Roads and Maritime Services to agree to the request is proving quite a task – particularly when both organisations seem happy to pass the buck to the other.

At first we were told that traffic volumes along Browning Street are not high enough to warrant a pedestrian crossing, which sounds a harshly bureaucratic response.

We’ve no doubt the RMS does have a formula to decide these things, but doubt it takes into consideration such special circumstances as the particular needs of the children at Carenne School.

Second, parents have been told that a drive way running from Research Station Drive (on the grounds of Charles Sturt University) into a car park behind the Carenne School would end the need for children to cross the road all together.

But such blinkered thinking ignores the reality that not every child is dropped off at school by car or bus – and that walking to school is a rare chance at some sort of “normal” childhood for some kids.

In the end, the only reason to knock back the parents’ request would be if a pedestrian crossing was going to make the area less safe, and it’s hard to see how that could happen.

A few lines on a road should not be such a tough ask for parents who should have far bigger battles to fight.

Can’t we just get it done?