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Experts worry over town traffic
Tuesday 13th January 2009, 1:30PM GMT.
Traffic congestion on Shrewsbury roads is likely to get “significantly worse” as the town grows, highway chiefs warned. Their fears were raised in a new report.
Major housing developments will increase the demand for journeys across the town and into the town centre, experts say.
The report provides an update on the progress being made to develop and deliver a new integrated transport strategy for Shrewsbury.
The aim of the strategy is to bring together public transport, traffic control and pedestrian and cycle improvements, which will enable the town to continue to develop while at the same time tackling congestion.
In recent months, the report says, question marks have been raised about whether the A5 Shrewsbury bypass will be able to handle the future development of the town – in particular traffic generated by the greenfield sites that will need to be developed for housing on the outskirts of the town.
A capacity study of the bypass is being undertaken.
And a review will begin shortly with the aim of finding a way of preventing delays on the Chester Street gyratory. The report says work is also due to start shortly on the development of a new Shropshire parking strategy. The report will be presented to county councillors on Thursday.
Today Shrewsbury business leader, Simon Airey, urged the council to review the town’s traffic lights system. He also said the chamber fully supported plans for a North West Relief Road.
Val Oldaker, of Shrewsbury Friends of the Earth, called for improvements to public transport and for people to be encouraged to cycle and walk in the town centre.
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Where areall these new people going to work? It is not just a question of building new houses, they have to be affordable and in the present climate any expansion of the town is a long way off.
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I can feel another push for Congestion Charges coming on.
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Northern Relief Road raising it’s head again.!
Let’s just get it built and be done with.
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finish the northern bypass, use the park and ride and if necessary build another p and r between wellington and salop and allow p and r buses to jointly serve telford/salop
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It’s taken long enough for the highway chiefs to finally realise what residents have known for over 20 years…!!!!
Welcome back to earth…
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So much so for saving the planet and leave you car at home, whats happened to public transport!!
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If only as much attention – and money – was going into developing and extending bus services in and around Shrewsbury!
Park and Ride demands only a 10-minute wait, while we have to wait 20 minutes or 30 minutes for a bus on some of the town routes, and an hour for villages even just on the outskirts of town. So, who’s getting favoured status there?
Park and Ride passengers only have a short walk to their nearest bus pick-up point. If only residents all over the town were given such consideration.
There are parts of the town which are effectively black holes – areas where there is no bus service at all.
The whole map of routes could do with some re-thinking too, given we don’t all want to just go in and out of the town centre.
Until there is this sort of good quality bus transport all over the town, including for the evenings, people will never consider it a real alternative to having and using their own cars.
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When the new Shrewsbury by-pass was built, it should have gone via the north of Shrewsbury so that there would be good road links with the industrial part of the town.
The southern part of town would have been served by the old by-pass and a better link for A49 would have completed the job.
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within the loop of the river, all motor cars should be banned. This area of the town is little more than a living museum and is not too disimilar from Blists Hill.
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Cutting traffic within the loop of the town will certainly make the centre of Shrewsbury a museum… a place which was once alive and now dead.
The public transport system in Shrewsbury is a joke and it appears the more effort put into controlling traffic in and around Shrewsbury the more the situation deteriorates.
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“Major housing developments will increase the demand for journeys across the town and into the town centre, experts say”
So why are there going to be ‘Major housing developments ??? Is this because local employers are going to be creating more local jobs in the future and need more employees ? I doubt it very much. More like acomodating hordes of ‘incomers’ from the West Midlands who want to live somewhere nice like Shrewsbury, but who’ll commute back to Brum/W’hampton for work every day (causing loads of pollution in the process)
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Well we all know Old Shrewsbury was never designed for traffic and over the years the planners have made it worse! Personally I only drive into the town when I have to otherwise I will circumnavigate it, park and ride is ok if you live in the right areas! conjestion charging will alienate the shoppers and no one can afford to do that in this climate :-(
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we need more roads in this county, the gyratory at the bridge in castle street is a mess, looks like it was deisgned by a socialist committee, what we need is a by pass round castlefields through to the abbey, i would suggest the existing footbridge by the dana could be turned into a road at minimal expense and used.
also the train track which is a waste of public subsidies, could be tar maced and turned into roads, the labour party with its healthrow plans, would never get transport sorted in shrewsbury, what is needed is a conservative government with a commitment to road building.
it is shown by fact since bliar came in in 1997 hardly any new roads got built and traffic got worse, motoring is more expensive than ever, the socialists tax us to the hilt and spend it all on stupid projects in the slums, we need more roads in shrewsbury and beyond
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what a loony tory proposal to build our way out of this mess, we all need to drive a wee bit less, period
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so surely the answer is not to expand the town then?!?!? with house prices crashing it seems daft to build more houses, as the other chap sys they are not for local people anyay, shrewsbury is becoming a dormitory for brum, we are big enough as a town, we dont need to be a city, new build is always ugly cheap and detracts from the towns heritage and tourism potentital, ditn we learn anything from the mistakes of the 60′s – we can live without expansion, we’re happy with what we’ve got
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Spot on Matt – absolutely agree. We can’t carry on expanding our towns and cities forever; we’re going to run out of space and destroy the very things that make them attractive in the first place. I’ve seen this happen to Bridgnorth over the past 20 years or so – lots of new buildings on green spaces to accomodate ‘expansion’ but local employement minimal. Look at the queues of commuters choking the roads in the morning off to Wolves/Telford/Bham. Bridgnorth was once a vibrant market town – now it’s a dormitory town with a beautiful and historic centre being increasingly swamped by innapropriate new build.
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