Here is a local snap-shot of #Bedford related activity and letter:
Thank you for your letter dated 19-11-19 delivered by hand this week to my letterbox. For 20 years I've been asking for the following:
1. CPZ extension and inclusion. This would bring bad parking, cheats, fraudsters and non compliant nuisance drivers and parking to book/increase intelligence and boost security to our road. Currently we are a 'free for all' parking lottering and bad parking is part of that ill-managed affair.
2. A one-way street scheme for the Saints area. We must get away from cheque-book empowerment, politics and influence and insist on equality for all not an 'all are equal, some more equal than others' sort of configuration/interpretation/practise. We often get speeders, stand offs and no where to go given parking either side of the street means a single carriagway and a blind corner from St Georges Road into St Michael's Road. Tempers can flare, Alexandra Road and Park Road North are other cases on the same issue.
3. Whilst I like trees, I fear that unpoliced/unregulated and 'free-for'all' laissez-fare parking will means backing into and knocking down saplings by bad parking and driving. Encroaching pavements is a problem for pedestrians who bear the brunt of the absence of proper highway policing, narrow pavements and multiple uses and abuses from cycles to people scooters, mobility buggies and powered other forms of transport, non registered, non vehicular but encroaching pedestrian space and safety none-the-less. High Street, North side of Mill Street and lower Kimbolton Road/St Peters Street are cases in point.
4. We should be salted in freezing weather and with trees, un-even pavements and so forth will add to the carnage problem. If you inspect the utility works in south side St Peters Street outside Portman House you will see how a. it is below 1 inch into the pavement and and b. will be a hazard for people to trip over in icy conditions. Needs inspection and amelioration.
5. I feel this works programme would be better for Spring or Summer, bad wet/icy winter seems laden with inconvenience. Pavements seem sound, are we to have black tarmac surfaces instead? Why?
6. If the Borough has more money could it look at a. updating timetable information and a new flag at the St Peters Stop North side outside the new Eagle Bookshop? b. Make all contracted bus services go via the railway station and bus station as part of their overall routes - integration, challenge car presumption and boost usership in all probability.
7. Could a consideration of traffic signals be given to the junction of Kimbolton Road/Pemberley Avenue/Oaklands Road? Many vehicles turn into and out of and turn around top of St Andrews - it is a hazards place to cross especially dark winters nights and traffic turns 3 ways. 4pm observation or 10am when the schools are shut is not rigorous, it is only a matter of time before more accidents happen. It is a rat run from Manton Lane-Park Avenue via Turner Way/Park Road North and Park Avenue - Kimbolton Road - Goldington Road via Oaklands and Goldington Avenue and vice versa. It needs stemming. These intermediate roads and areas have 20mph speed signs but no enforcement of them day or night and Rothsay Gardens is another hot spot for speeding. They go to/from Goldington Road and The Embankment for St Marys Street and Kimbolton Road avoiding town centre and Bushmead Lights. Could a bus and cycle only one way between Bushmead and Howbury Street down Castle Road be done, as this narrow piece of road gets cluttered with buses, vans and cars and is a disincentive for pedestrians trying to cross between the numerous small shops either side. Buses often can't get through and the Highway Code Book of pedestrians and giving way to buses seems to be out to lunch these days.
These articles may put it in a wider context, but from localism to globalism, we need grassroots changes and modal shift to be nurtured more, not pandering to popularism and ever more exhaust emisssions. Trees may absorb carbon, but it is like a bucket of water into the river, compared with ending fossil fuelled engines and cutting volume and thus friction from tyres on hard surfaces.
1. Depression and suicide linked to air pollution in new global study
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