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As residents of Caldecote Village know only too well, driving in or out of the village means doing battle with the “traffic calming” measures installed by Taylor Wimpey years and years ago when the new housing developments were built.
Looking at available records, when the new developments were approved, it was decided (not sure by whom) that traffic calming measures should be installed, to calm the increased traffic expected along the main road. Fair dinkum… but that was not what the village was given…
Some might say the term “traffic calming” should be replaced with “car wrecking” and they might be correct in that assertion.
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Speed Thumps
There ar
e 15 thumps in total along Highfields Road, 3 of these are at the southern end approach to the village and those living on Strympole Way who travel out of the village northwards don’t have to go over those. But they still have the other 13 to deal with.
These speed thumps are the cheapest and nastiest way of implementing traffic calming. Slabs of tar, thrown across the road, that look like third-sawn-thru-timber logs.
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Mini Roundabouts
Then there are the mini-roundabouts. These are supposed to ease traffic coming onto the main road from the side roads. These mini roundabouts are a health and safety hazard, a danger to the travelling public. There’s been so many near misses, its incredible that no one has been injured or killed yet. For anyone approaching the roundabouts from West Drive, and Clare Drive north in particular, your life is in your hands. Visibility is so poor, because the stop line is too far in to the side road.
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Parish Council v County Council Highways
The Caldecote Parish Council has locked horns with the County Council Highways for years about these death traps, but no one would listen. They look at their records (which are questionable), and then tell the PC that the thumps have been built to specification and that’s that. What they have failed to take into account is that the design that was shown to the PC at the time was not what was eventually built. Someone from the Highways even went so far as to say “the thumps are ok, and should pose no problem if traversed at the appropriate speed”. Ok, pray tell, what is the “appropriate speed”, 10mph, 15 mph 20mph or 30mph?? The road is supposed to be a 30mph limit – a car cannot traverse those thumps , at that speed without damage to the car or occupants.
The County Highways finally agree that there is a problem with them, and that when the thumps and roundabouts had been adopted by the County, then the PC could have them removed and replaced with more appropriate measures. At the expense of the Parish Council.
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Joined Up Thinking Not At Work
However, and here is the funny-not-funny-haha bit. In order to adopt these hazards, the developer was told to repair them and bring them up to standard. And what happens, the developer promptly comes in during the month of August, takes out the mini roundabouts completely, resurfaces the road at those junctions, and then replaces the roundabouts and traffic islands with new ones, and paints them over. To compound the issue, the roundabouts taken out were Mk II. The new ones are MkI – which had been taken out previously because of local complaints, and replaced by the Mk II. So we are now back to MkI. Go figure!!
So, here we have a situation where money is being spent by the developer to remove and reinstate hazards on the road, only to have these same hazards removed at taxpayer’s expense. Can someone tell me where the sense is in that?? Whatever happened to joined-up thinking?? Gone AWOL??? The County Councillor (Fiona Whelan), I and the Parish Council Chairman (Jack Lang) tried desperately to get the works temporarily suspended so as to agree on best way forward, but all those who could have taken the decisions were on holiday.
Now, I am not one for conspiracy theories, but it seems too much of a coincidence that the works were being done at that time of year….. and those that were able to do something about it were all out of the office on holiday. Too convenient.
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Plea by Residents
So, as the residents of Caldecote go about their daily business, they have the added stress of navigating the hazards left for them as a legacy of previous large scale developments, and try to ensure that they don’t get killed on their own local road.
And this is the same village being threatened with having 97 more houses built in it. Bureaucracy has its place, but not at the expense of people’s lives, well-being and amenity.