Car-friendliest town in county?
Friday 10th July 2009, 10:00AM BST.
In today’s Talking Point, we’re asking for your views on the most car-friendly town in the county, following on from one of today’s letters about slow traffic in Telford.
Which is the easiest Shropshire town to drive around in your opinion? Let us know your thoughts in the forum below.
The letter reads as follows:
Award as car-kindly town must be a joke
I believe I read somewhere that Telford has won an award for being the most car-friendly place in the country. What? Are they joking?
We may not have that many congestion problems, but that is only because nobody voluntarily chooses to come here.
Since I moved here – because of my job I hasten to add – I have noticed that Telford & Wrekin Council has consistently slowed traffic down by imposing unrealistic speed limits on roads that, quite frankly, never needed it.
Dual carriageways reduced to 50 and 60 mph and in some places, reduced to single lanes. What for?
Pedestrian refuges appear in the middle of roads where there are never any pedestrians. They are only there to stop traffic from overtaking.
I have lived here for over 10 years now and have very rarely seen or heard of serious accidents occurring on these roads.
Just because the council put up signs, which are probably a danger in themselves, showing some highly dubious statistics, I don’t think it should give them the right to slow everything down to a crawl.
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They’ve just turned the road from M54 junction 6 towards Ironbridge into 90% dual carriageway with a 30mph speed limit. So what’s the point of spending all that cash on making a dual carriageway that you can’t really (legally) overtake on?
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Over the years more speed humps, traffic lights, islands and pot holes have appeared in Telford. I would say it is more pedestrian friendly as there are loads of footpaths to avoid the traffic jams
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Andrew – totally agree with your comments about the dual carriageway that has been built going towards Lawley from Junc 6, worse still sections of it change to single carriageway, are the planners really that stupid and cannot see what is going to happen or is it a ploy to create accidents so that they can justify cameras on there.
What I find amazing about our highway planners is the fact that they lack any spine, since they cannot seem to answer people’s questions and concerns about why certain changes to the road system are carried out.
My biggest gripe is – why are the traffic lights at Ketley and Trench not PART-TIME ?
Will we get an answer I doubt it – since I firmly believe that they are spineless and mute.
I have very little time for the Green party since they never seem to argue the impact of all the vehicles stopping unnecessarily has on the environment.
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Telford and wrekin council say get lost to the motorist in Telford, and that is exactly what the motorist,s do in Telford – they get totally lost due to the stupid road layout. Does any one know what lane they should be in when traveling along the EP and what lane on any roundabout in the whole of Telford
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I’m sorry if you blame the Green Party when your car is idling, Richard. The aim of Green Party policy is to make people’s quality of life better, not worse, and to introduce practical policies which make it easier and cheaper for them to live greener lives.
I hope I have shown in the past that the Green Party does have a spine, that we are willing to debate, and that we want to engage people like you, Richard, in discussing the difficult choices that our democracy
a) can make now or
b) may have forced on us by events in the future.
To do this, we need to ask questions about planning our towns now and into the future.
Is it sustainable on a planet of nearly 7 billion people with peak oil on the near horizon to plan our towns around the fossil-fuelled car?
Should we assume that the ‘car-friendliest’ towns are the places where most people will want to live?
Does ‘car-friendly’ equate to ‘high on the quality of life index’?
Or should we be aiming to increase the quality of life of people living in places which until now have been dominated by the car?
‘Access for all’ is a key idea in this discussion; after all not all people have a car.
Facilities like shops, services, leisure and entertainment should be created close to where people live, so that they don’t need the car. This should be a starting point in the planning process.
Transport budgets should be invested now in creating a fully integrated transport system which is clean, safe, reliable and affordable for all. By ‘integrated’ I mean a day pass would give you access to a bus-tram-train-underground system like in European cities.
Ignoring big issues like climate change and rising fuel price rises and blaming those who take a longer view is not sustainable in the long term on a planet where people are only too aware that these issues (and greens) are not going to go away.
Please let me know what you think of the above, Richard.
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Any council that has to spend a fortune on fancy flashing signs to tell you that you are going over the speed limit has set the limit unrealistically low! Wide roads with no (or wide) pavements, few side turnings and a limit of 50 instead of 60mph is crazy and unjustified whilst some country roads have 1 or 2 houses and a 30mph limit; if they carry on at this rate we may as well go back to horse and carts! Add to this the total messes at Trench Lock and Newport High Street and the only conclusion has to be either that the Highways Department are desperately trying to keep themselves in work or that they are completely barking mad!
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Arguments about getting around aside, what about the fact that one has to pay to park at Telford Centre! How friendly is that?
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I have driven round Birmingham, Glasgow, Edinburgh and many other towns on my travels. I find towns no better or worse than each other – there are too many confusing and conflicting signs and road systems contrary to anything I saw learning to drive only 7 years ago and have to admit I am probably somewhat of a hazard more so in towns and cities than on the motorway due to my trying to make sense of complicated road systems and find my way to where I’m going! Fortunately other drivers seem to recognise the actions of driver who is confused about which direction she is supposed to take (thanks!) The Edinburgh bypass from the east coast was the most interesting and weird double roundabout system! In some ways it’s useful as a learning curve but in busy traffic it’s really not helpful – whatever happened to the basic rules as per the highway code? It can’t possibly accommodate all the ‘artistic’ new road designs!
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Don’t know about spineless but they are certainly useless.
The letter writer is correct in saying that there are few accidents on the roads before the changes. When I asked for accident records on some of the major routes with limit drops , the accident figures per kilometer travelled were less than half the national average.
The latest “farce” is trying to introduce a 40MPH limit on parts of the A4640 between priorslee and the clocktower roundabout and 50 MPH on the rest of it. One of the daftest reasons is…and I quote from their own Statementof Reasons……”Existing light columns are close to the edge of the carriageway and cause potential hazard to road users at NSL”….
yes folks you couldn’t make this up.
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Absolutely agree that Telford is one of the easiest and most car friendly towns in the country and probably top of the league in the county.
I travel and work all over the country and am always impressed by how much less congestion there is in Telford, how much more accessible most of the new roads are, and much better designed they seem compared to the majority of towns I travel to.
Additional speed restrictions and other traffic measures have been introduced in some areas, usually on the basis of incident history, but even this seems to be less though than for most towns I have been to.
If anything, the danger is in the contrast between the main road system in and around Telford and the more traditional high-risk country roads of Shropshire (offset by the county being a large agriculuturally focused region with a relatively low population).
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Stuart Moore,
You should have been here 20 or more years ago before they started to mess it up…..THEN it was car friendly.
There is very little “incident history” if you were to actually look at the figures. The major increases in “incidents” are usually on the roads that they have “improved”.
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Easier towns in shropshire to drive around?
Try; Shifnal, Wem, Market Drayton, Bridgnorth,Broseley, Albrighton, Whitchurch, Ellesmere….need I go on?
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THe new roads at Lawley were not designed by the Council or their highways department but by the developer rebuilding the valley nto a sprawling housing estate. The design takes this change into account and the road speeds and dual lanes is based on the predicated traffic volume in 2023 when the housing is completed – 3300 new homes = say 5000 extra cars and lots more buses and delivery vans going to the new supermarket, pubs and hotel being built there.
Oh and by the way, there will be another 6 or 7 sets of traffic lights between the M54, Lawley and Old Park when its all done so I suggest you enjoy the space and freedom of this new road while you can, and remeber when you complain, its hasn’t cost you a penny, its all private cash.
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Huw Peach – the points that you make in your reply to my posting in general I do not disagree with, at the end of the day I think the vast majority of people would like to live in small villages with all the necessary shops, services, transport links etc – that would be fantastic. BUT how would those shops and services survive, they would have to charge more for there goods and services due to the lower number of customers using them, and that is exactly the reason why so many of the village shops etc have closed in recent years.
I would really appreciate a direct answer from Huw Peach with regards to part-time traffic lights – are you generally for them or not – a straight yes or no. No long winded politician none answer
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I don’t know the specifics of the traffic lights, which you dislike, Richard Breeze, but I personally would support the introduction of traffic lights, which help traffic flow more easily, as long as they are safe for all road users.
Brian2 and I discussed a scheme in Drachten, Holland, in this thread ( http://www.shropshirestar.com/2008/06/13/group-to-air-views-of-drivers/ (#24 onwards).
Traffic lights were abolished completely in Drachten town centre, where cyclists and pedestrians had equal rights with cars; accident rates dropped significantly.
You can find more details about the Drachten scheme by Googling ‘Daily Telegraph 04/11/2006 ‘Is this the end of the road for traffic lights?’’
What I like about this scheme is the mutual respect that this scheme has engendered between ALL road users.
I don’t know if Drachten would fit the bill as ‘car-friendliest town’ in Holland, but it is clearly a good place to live. These are the sort of road management ideas which I personally would be pushing for.
What do you think, Richard?
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Huw – I have read about the scheme in Holland and I believe that it has had a major beneficial improvement in safety levels. The point that you make about cyclists and pedestrians having equal rights is valid but with those rights also comes responsibilities ie pay attention to where you are going and not expect the other user to have to take evasive action.
In Wellington occasionaly the traffic lights fail at the end of Market Street, and guess what things appear to work a lot better since people are natuarally more cautious, and not reliant upon signs telling you when to stop and go, and the traffic flows better.
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I agree totally that cyclists and pedestrians have responsibilities, too.
Mutual respect between road users has to be at the heart of the transport discussion.
That’s the beauty of the Dutch scheme. Everyone is looking out for themselves and for others.
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Huw said, “but I personally would support the introduction of traffic lights, which help traffic flow more easily, as long as they are safe for all road users.”
Are you joking, Huw?
Show me a set of traffic lights where the traffic flow is improved. I can name dozens where the traffic flows better when they are off. If you want one close to home try Featherbed lane in shrewsbury…I’ve seen those faulty a few times and guess what….no queues.
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