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Traffic pledge over lane trial
Wednesday 1st July 2009, 1:14PM BST.
Trials of a new cycle lane over a bridge in Shrewsbury are to blame for a sudden spate of tailbacks and traffic snarl-ups causing town delays at peak times, it was claimed today.
Motorists have said town centre traffic queues reached as far as Copthorne Barracks on Monday afternoon following the start of the cycle lane trial on English Bridge.
One driver, Terry Adlington, said described the traffic as “gridlock”.
“I saw the traffic was going all the way up The Mount and out to Copthorne Barracks,” he said.
“I had driven past the cycle lane earlier on and when I saw the queues I thought the traffic was like you would normally expect to see on a Saturday before Christmas.”
Shropshire Council is testing the impact of introducing a new cycle lane as part of its Cycle Shrewsbury campaign and is due to be in place until Friday.
Laura Owen, Shropshire Council spokeswoman, said: “Generally, traffic has been running fine, including morning rush hour, but traffic was slow-moving on Monday after 4.30pm.
“The roadworks associated with the housing development on Spring Gardens may have resulted in some people changing their route out of the town centre last evening .
“Traffic queues exiting the town centre yesterday were monitored and the trial will be stopped if they become excessive.”
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It was total grid-lock for the town and surrounding routes – so no doubt the traffic engineers at Shirehall will hail it a ‘roaring success’ and install it perminantly – judging by their past performances.
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Not had the ‘pleasure’ of trying to drive around this one, but I’m also a cyclist would like to ask the question as to ‘why do we need cycle lanes anyway?’ They are a total waste of public money.
Cyclists belong on the normal roads along with other traffic and motorists just have to put up with that and learn to drive accordingly
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5pm last night, two vans (council) parked in the new ‘cycle lane’ – cyclists using footpath dodging pedestrians.
I have a theory… If the council can get the town totally gridlocked they can justify the NWRR and get additional
funding from government for this… I cannot think of any other reason for the idiotic traffic management in and around
Shrewsbury.
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Is there really any need for this?
I cycled to work for a number of years from The Farthings to Frankwell using existing cycle routes and some roads. I never experienced any problem whatsoever. I just used decent road sense when cycling on trafficked highways.
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“Although our research shows that this essential trial will have little impact on traffic queues, we’d like to apologise in advance for any disruption this may cause.”
So what research did that involve then…the same pathetic research that always results in total disruption when they are …”going to improve traffic flow”, no doubt…
typical council thinking!
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total exageration there is no major congestion in Shrewsbury – go and live in london for a week you insane people – there is no major problem with waiting in traffic for 5 minutes, its when it takes 50 minutes like in Hereford now that is REAL congestion, shrewsbury and shropshire are some of the calmest most cycling friendly traffic free roads i have come across in all my days
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i am pleased they are giving it a go
we are sooo fat in shropshire now, walking down the high street looks like america
cycling is a win win, greener, leaner, cleaner
come on salopians i know us brits love to winge but lets take our hat off to those road planners for encouraging cycling because it could save lives and save the NHS billions with a reduction in body fat for people
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we dont need a north west relief road – we dont really have congestion in shrewsbury we do have a wonderful green lung on the north west side of town which is currently undevelopable because of the lack of a by pass – lets keep it that way!
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Another “improvement” by our council it will be as much as a sham as the one at telford way, which has stoped me cycling to work.
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i try to cycle to work where possible but there is little incentive whilst car parking is free. I would like to get more support from my employers (tesco) because lets face it i am helping keep car parking spaces free for the customers whilst my collegues are not, i think they should have to pay
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cycling is a socialist labour invention
we must cut taxes on petrol and only conservatives will do that
we are the motorists friend
clown brown is a cycling friendly leftie greenie hippy and he must go now to stop silly socialist projects like this one
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i think its a great idea
i see no problem with the trial
i saw no congestion on the days of the trial
i think there is relatively little congestion in shrewsbury at any time really
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its only a trial
lets see how it works before we jump to an opinion
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cycling is for greenie leftie liberals
get back in your car which labour taxes and drive to jersey where taxes are lower i say
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thats what they said about their traffic ‘survey’ which caused tail backs
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