My recent frustration with the cycling commute as previously seen in this blog was recently reported within the local media. I was talking to the journalist who wrote the article at a meeting and he was surprised to hear me speaking of cycling in a non-positive way.
In the interest of balance he contacted Staffordshire County Council for an opinion and as can be seen in the article the response is disappointing.
How the Burton Mail reported my frustration. It is a good article and I welcome the help of the Burton Mail in raising awareness of issues faced.
The response is limited to a statement about keeping pedestrians, cyclists and motorists separate at roadworks. From my experience of temporoary traffic lights I tend not to cycle with the traffic as you are often lucky if you can get through in a car before the lights change, let alone a cycle.
The issues I have raised are about the lack of planning of an alternative route following the enforced closure of a critical part of the National Cycle Network, i.e. a route that a 14 year old child should be able to cycle confidently on.
Cycling over St Peters Bridge in the morning rush hour feels about as far away from safe as you can get but SCC don't seem to have any concerns over this. I am aware that funding at that level is scarce and have genuine sympathy for those who are trying to do a decent job in difficult circumstances but these concerns must be raised.
Talking of St Peters bridge, there has been talk recently of putting a 3rd lane in. Personally I find this approach staggering for a number of reasons:
Click here to read about the outline plans for a 3rd lane across St Peters Bridge.
The provision of a 3rd lane would in effect give the bridge a slight increase in capacity, but how will this traffic flow increase at either end? Surely the bodies mentioned need to be looking at some form of simulation software based on improving the flow at either end of the bridge. Perhaps changing the pedestrian crossings to subways may work out better.
A huge concern is the talk of not having any pedestrian access on the newly expanded bridge - let's hope the Ferrybridge is actually reopened!
The cost of the work itself would be very expensive and the true benefits will not be known until the Drakelow crossing comes to fruition. If using funding from developments I would imagine the scale of the development itself would lead to increased traffic anyway. Hopefully this would take away a major chunk of the traffic for those who need to drive through Burton to access the A38 rather than drive into Burton.
With through traffic partially taken care of most people then have business to attend to in Burton itself. Assuming, unlike the person in Stapenhill featured in the article, they do not
need to drive into town, then the authorities could look to put ways of alternative transport forward and actually encourage people to do something different.
I'm not necessarily talking about walking or cycling here (although it would be great if more people did so). I'm referring to using the bus. Train fare rises seem to attract headlines yet bus fares / subsidies don't and from my experience of recent years bus fares have gone up but the level of service (certainly from Church Gresley, due to Arriva cutting routes) has not improved! Sadly the Ivanhoe line does not look likely at any point soon.
It is also interesting how much better the flow of traffic improves around school holidays, so the impact of trends on traffic, and the potential understanding around these should be further looked into.
Another alternative to the issues which is certainly cheaper for the authorities was reported in the link below. Whilst this seems to take a more pragmatic approach to the problem I would imagine motorist may have an issue with this and it is still looking at it from a vehicular point of view.
Click here to read the Burton Mail report on a possible one way system solution.
What I would say to those proposing these schemes is to look at the issue outside the box rather than think of cars alone. The approach to the Ferrybridge works and these schemes indicate worryingly that alternative methods of transport are still a long way down the list in the Burton area. I'd encourage those proposing the extra lane to cycle into Burton in that area, particularly while the Ferrybridge is out of use. The phrase Genchi Genbutsu refers to the Toyota system of going to see the situation to understand the problem and I think this would be of benefit to those mentioned above.
One approach would be to turn the tables completely and mimic the bridge being closed due to the work involved. During this time, keep it open only to pedestrians, cycles buses and emergency vehicles and monitor how people adapt........
