I have worked as a highways designer in many local authorities in the London area and sadly, it seems that improvements are made for only 2 reasons: - a serious (or fatal) accident occurred at location, or - a local councilor (or residents' group) is very vocal about the issue, preferably with a petition
The reason why improvements are only carried out for the 2 reasons above is quite simple - lack of funds. As there are more and more cuts in local government budgets, I do not see the situation improving. Over the years, I have often been in a situation where myself or a colleague knew of a less-than-ideal road layout at a specific location but where we had no funds to improve it. The worse thing is we quite often know how we could improve the layout, the only issue is lack of funds to actually build it. Traffic officers gather their own data and do not rely on data provided by residents. I have never been in a situation where survey data was passed on by a group of residents, normally they limit themselves to telling us things such as the times the traffic is worse, the kind of wrong driving they see on the road (too fast, HGVs driving on the pavement, traffic not observing correct priorities etc). Their observations help us understand the situation but we always check everything ourselves. I don't think factual data would help a residents' group to get their case ahead with the council but it would probably help you to convince your local councilor, adjoining wards' councilors, residents' group and neighbours to take up the cause and send a petition to the council (from what I have seen in London boroughs, this is a good way to attract funding for a project). >From my experience, another reason for a genuine traffic problem not to be given funding is political battles. I have seen many valid traffic improvements not going ahead when a new party got in and basically decided not to give funding to any of the previous projects. So my advice would be to work on this from a multi-party perspective if several parties are represented, or have been represented recently, in your area, or you risk finding yourself a pawn in a political battle. Sad but true, this happens very often (and is very frustrating for everybody involved, including the council officers who genuinely want the improvements to go ahead but are actually powerless when it comes to allocating funding to a project). As for schools, the issue is quite often created/made worse by the parents who park on double yellow lines or other areas where the presence of their vehicles affect the visibility for drivers. So a big thing is education re: why it's important not to park on double yellow lines - they are there for visibility reasons, not for the pleasure of making rules. Another thing is to encourage parents to walk children to/from school, and to share picking up duties with other parents, to reduce the amount of parked vehicles in vicinity of school, therefore improving visibility (speed and visibility being the two main causes of accidents). Having moved to Bournemouth only 3 months ago, I have to say I am quite appalled by the local traffic in my area (Winton). I know London is supposed to be bad for traffic but here, drivers seem to not even see pedestrians, let alone let them cross. Quite often, I find myself having to rush back to the pavement because drivers only pay attention to other road traffic and do not see there is somebody actually crossing the road. London was a lot more pedestrian friendly, I think a lot of educating of drivers regarding pedestrians could be done here. Of course, money is needed for that and with all the current cuts, this is probably not going to happen... On 12/09/2010, Dan Jones <ldanto.jo...@gmail.com> wrote: > On 12 September 2010 11:56, jr <jr4...@gmail.com> wrote: > >> On 12 September 2010 11:42, Robert Bronsdon <reash...@gmail.com> wrote: >> > It gets the public accustomed to collecting evidence, dubious accuracy. >> > against their peers. >> > >> > It makes people accustomed, to aiding in the prosecution of their peers, >> in >> > the process of 'potential crimes'. It also makes people accustomed to >> remote >> > monitoring of their peers, by their peers. If I can monitor you-or-you, >> then >> > the police can do it just fine. >> >> this sort of already happened. >> >> http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/6108496.stm >> >> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mass_surveillance#United_Kingdom >> > > The Police have been training a select group of residents in Chideock to use > Gatsos. Issue there being is that theres a protest group in Chideock > attempting to get the A35 down-rated to a B road and traffic restricted. > Giving them the ability to sit with a speed gun and wax lyrical about the > need for the road to be down-rated. Not the greatest plan in the world, > especially when you let vigilante group get involved. > > ~Dan > -- > Next meeting: Bournemouth? TBD, Wednesday 2010-10-06 20:00 > Meets, Mailing list, IRC, LinkedIn, ... http://dorset.lug.org.uk/ > How to Report Bugs Effectively: http://bit.ly/4sACa > -- Google Android, programming and web design at http://www.cogitas.net/blog/ -- Next meeting: Bournemouth? TBD, Wednesday 2010-10-06 20:00 Meets, Mailing list, IRC, LinkedIn, ... http://dorset.lug.org.uk/ How to Report Bugs Effectively: http://bit.ly/4sACa
