Following a short consultation with members of the public, Cheshire East Highways has decided to rethink its temporary Active Travel Scheme for the Pownall Park area of Wilmslow.
The proposed measures included closing the road at Broad Walk and Carrwood Road and introducing a 20mph speed limit across the whole Pownall Park area. However, the plans have now been suspended and will not be implemented in its current format.
This temporary plan was intended to help encourage cycling and walking in the area and allow a safe walking route to the two schools there. It would have been fully funded by the Department for Transport and was designed to see if any permanent measures would be needed.
Cheshire East councillor for the ward, Cllr Mark Goldsmith said "I had hoped we could at least try this scheme, even for a week as it would help us find a solution to the different traffic problems in the area. However, we have a public consultation process for a reason, so we must consider the residents opinions too. We are supposed to be implementing this for their benefit, so if they clearly don't want it, then we must accept their view and rethink the measures.
"The 20mph zone was widely welcomed but unfortunately the legislation does not allow us to implement this on its own. Therefore, it is back to the drawing board. I hope our Highways Department can devise an alternative that tackles the road issues but in a way the residents can accept."
If an alternative scheme is proposed for this area, then it will be publicly announced and involve a short public consultation period to allow residents to help shape their town.
Comments
Here's what readers have had to say so far. Why not add your thoughts below.
Good to see people voices (democracy?) being heard from the consultation process.
I was absolutely dreading the impact of the proposal on the Water Lane traffic lights.
The council should have stuck to their position and painted a better picture, not least by working with the schools in the area.
We need radical changes imposed on our systems: we're in the middle of a health crisis, and an even bigger climate crisis - the council has declared an emergency after all!
We can choose to have a town with an environment of equitable use of our public spaces. We can choose to allow our children to be outdoors without us fearing for their lives. The COVID pandemic has given us an opportunity to re-imagine a better future by showing us how much more pleasant our streets can be.
I hope that the mooted "alternative scheme" comes to fruition and that we can all be open to considering different priorities for our town.
We still need a few more signatures for the October motion to Cheshire East: please sign and share!
https://www.change.org/p/cheshire-east-20-s-plenty-for-cheshire-east
Can you please go and look at the experiment in Poynton. It causes chaos by making a major road a shared space.
Cars don’t drive down the carrs, which is 100 metres away and can be used by cyclists and walkers to get to the same destination as the road does. So there is already an alternative, so no need to hit the car drivers.
Yes it is a win/lose situation. If that road is closed the town loses as it will become grid locked like poynton.
And if you visit the crashmap.co.uk site, you'll understand why parents feel Altrincham Road isn't safe for any of it and default is to drive children to the gates (perhaps they haven't realised that the air pollution is much more concentrated inside the car because of where the air intakes are located, i.e. by the exhaust of the car in front). So alternative routes need to be found and made safe, with good crossing points for residents South of the main road to access.
That said, it's not just about past accidents, is it? Are you saying we should wait for a serious injury before bringing in changes like these? If it's modal shift we need, it's about near misses and minor accidents that put people off, perception of safety / frailty of road user, and air quality.
Residents who objected because they feared displaced traffic onto other roads, please read this: https://londonlivingstreets.com/2019/07/11/evaporating-traffic-impact-of-low-traffic-neighbourhoods-on-main-roads/
@Gary and others now celebrating the decision: it's those who can't imagine a different world that are not "thinking things through". We needed to build back better not go back to unsustainable, unhealthy habits - and that requires lots of thought.
More reading for you, great article on why we need to cut car use for the school run
https://theconversation.com/school-run-cutting-car-use-will-take-much-more-than-educating-children-and-parents-143382
And this blog post from University of Manchester explores how we could be closer to our places of work post lockdown, so that car commuting can be drastically reduced:
https://blogs.manchester.ac.uk/mui/2020/05/27/the-covid-19-lockdown-has-forced-us-to-decentralise-work-lets-not-go-back/
Made zero sense to funnel more traffic onto Altrincham Road.
There are a fantastic set of public footpaths that lead from the town centre straight up to the school. So your talking nonsense. It can’t be on for Chelsea tractors to ferry kids and everyone else can stuff off?
At the end of the day it’s clear what the majority think. Common sense has prevailed.