Traffic, Parking & Road Safety Group

Remit

• Speed awareness and enforcement

  • How can we reduce speed throughout the village?

• Parking - education and changing habits at school times

  • Can we engage with the school / governors to raise awareness of issues?

  • How can we engage with local Police Community Support Officers (PCSOs)?

• Improving safety at junctions (what are the options / costs etc?)

• Quick wins ie: what can we achieve quickly and easily so that we gain momentum and can soon start to show some progress?

• Community engagement ie: how can we maximise opportunities for engagement across the village, including residents, Church, School, Council etc?​

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Activities and future plans​

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Speed

In November 2017 a group of volunteers undertook some speed monitoring with the aid of SID – the Speed Indicator Device.  Having SID in operation in the village for a week proved extremely useful.

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Not surprisingly, volunteers noted that they could see and hear vehicles slowing down as they approached the high viz jackets and electronic device – although there were one or two exceptions.

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The device was used at a variety of times of the day and in several different locations.  Inevitably, at school times there was often chaos although this did bring down the average speeds recorded.  What surprised some of us though was the duration of the school run periods – often extending to an hour at each end of the day.

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Higher speeds were generally recorded at weekends and lunchtimes with the highest speed recorded at 46mph coming in to the village on New Road.  The chicane seems to have two quite different influences on traffic – it slows it down when traffic is coming out of the village but it can also encourage others to speed up when the coast is clear.

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We will be meeting with WMDC Traffic Engineers in September / October and will discuss with them ways in which we can make the 20mph zone more prominent as we suspect that many drivers don’t see the current signage.​

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Road Safety

The group has liaised with Wakefield Council regarding the potential use of mirrors at the junction of Back Lane / Ninevah Lane and New Road.  However, WMDC’s policy is NOT to erect mirrors as they believe these can create more problems.  Apart from the thorny issue of liability in the event of an accident, they believe that the mirrors give drivers a false sense of the speed of approaching vehicles and can therefore cause accidents.  For the time being at least, this option has been put on the back burner but we hope to meet with the Traffic Engineers at WMDC in September/October and will take another look at the junction to see if they can make any suggestions.​

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Tackling inconsiderate and illegal parking

This is a source of frustration to many in the village, and not just during school times. The Group is planning a 3-pronged approach which we hope to start to implement later this year.

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We have already met with the local Police Community Support Officers who have agreed to spend more time in the village, especially during school run times, in order to educate people dropping off school children.  Where appropriate, we will be working with them to ensure that illegal parking such as on the yellow zig-zags and in the no-parking area is enforced.  We will also focus on parking on pavements where an obstruction is caused as this means parents and children are forced to walk in the road.

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We also hope to collaborate with the School and PCSOs to create greater awareness amongst the children of what is “naughty” parking and what is “nice” parking.  Alongside this we will seek the School’s views in respect of a parking charter aimed at parents.

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Outside of school times we also know that there are examples of obstruction of footpaths as well as people parking too close to junctions thereby reducing or completely obscuring visibility. 

All aspects of inconsiderate and illegal parking are being looked at and a variety of 3rd parties are being engaged so we cover all angles.