Junction U-turn denied

Alex Gore • Published 28 Jan 2012 17:00 2 Comments

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A FORMER transport boss has denied doing a u-turn over his refusal to reinstate roundabouts at a nightmare traffic junction.

Tory transport spokesman, Cllr Richard Willis, backed bringing back the roundabouts at the infamous Shinfield Road junction during this week's Reading Borough Council meeting - despite refusing to do so while in charge of the town's roads last year.

Cllr Willis said he had always maintained he could not recommend the roundabouts' return until officers said it was safe to do so. He said his change of heart follows the Transport Research Laboratory (TRL) report, which was published after the Tory-Lib Dem Coalition lost control in May and argued in favour of the status quo because it was unable to conclude that traffic lights were safer.

Cllr Willis told The Chronicle: "I had no way of taking something to cabinet without expert support for taking out the lights. Now we have got the report, we have got the justification. The overwhelming majority of residents want the roundabouts back."

The Labour administration say restoring the junction to its original state will cost up to £600,000 but Cllr Willis believes the bill would actually be in the "tens of thousands" and called for designs to be drawn up.

Transport leader Cllr Tony Page admitted the scheme was below standard - with tailbacks now commonplace - but stressed it was a "serious attempt" to improve safety at a junction where three people have died.

He said improvements recommended by TRL will be completed by March, including cycle priority areas at the lights, and widening the road at the northbound right turn lane from Shinfield Road into Elm Road.

Cllr Page stressed the Tories had plenty of opportunities to make changes last year, while current Lib Dem transport spokesman and former Coalition ally Ricky Duveen accused them of a cynical attempt to gain votes in Church ward.

Cllr Duveen asked: "Would the Tories like to explain why thousands of pounds was spent on a fair and independent review only to reject its findings now?"

This article appeared in Reading Chronicle 26 Jan 12

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CommonSense Party
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Jan 28, 18:43
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I recommend to Cllr Duveen that he read the report and then he will know, as Cllr willis now knows, that the conclusions do not match the main body of the report. Why this is so is open to speculation as there was an unpublished draft report prepared for RBC which went backto TRL for amendments! Perhaps the amendments were to the conclusions and that is why they do not fit with the main body.

Those who have read it properly will know that the report shows in its accident predictions that roundabouts with the same 20mph limit as the lights have is actually considered the safest option, which is exactly why Cllr Willis is now calling for the people of Reading to have their wishes respected and the roundabouts re-instated. He now has his expert backing that the 'experts' at RBC would never give him.

As for Cllr Page and his safety justification, it would be good for those councillors who wish to simply believe this to look at the actual accident records and then they will know that the roundabouts were in no way responsible for most of the accidents. Safety was a red herring for a scheme which has caused hold ups and misery for untold thousands of people and actually creates 'rat running' in previously quiet roads.

Reports previously published by TRL show that roundabouts at '3 arm' junctions together with 'mid block' pedestrian crossings are the safest arrangements for such junctions. It makes you wonder why the 'experts' at RBC are unaware of this recognised data!

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Luis
4 posts
Feb 1, 21:35
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The purpose of the ‘A327 corridor’ was to create congestion and thus engineer a traffic shift for the benefit of Reading Buses and the Shinfield developer. Cllr Livingston told me 3 years ago that she’d be happy to see 5 or 6 years of misery in Elm Road if this meant “cars off the road”. Thus the scheme combines autocracy, dogmatism, vested interests and officers’ lack of integrity: it is based on false promises, misinformation on technical issues and unethical “consultations”.

Cllr Duveen (Lib Dem spokesman on transport), like every other Cllr, has known all this since Chris Wagstaff presented our 760-petition two years ago. As a TMAP panellist, he has also attended every meeting, including the one on 10.02.10 where Pat Baxter confessed to STAG members that, although safety could be improved in the local centre without removing the roundabouts (i.e. the Low-Cost Option), the Enhancement Option would ‘draw extra funding’.

And yet, Cllr Duveen has voted with Labour every time. Are the Lib-Dems therefore not equally complicit in this gross waste of public funds and blight on our community? They should be well advised to read TRL’s report in full and the letter that STAG emailed to all Cllrs on 27.11.11; and become wise to —and acknowledge— the fact that the Low-Cost option would have done the job a lot better without affecting the environment and the property prices of the area.

It is true that Cllr Willis betrayed the promises that he made from 2009 onwards, and that he used Pat Baxter’s lies to deny our May 2010 request to stop and re-think the works —his 09.06.10 letter is available from shinfieldtag@gmail.com— but could he have gone against Pat Baxter’s “advice”? Cllr Page told him (Cabinet 28.11.11) that “if he had had the bottle” he could have done what he wanted, thus implying that he does (without listening to reason or to the people he represents, as we all know).

TRL did their job by reporting that the roundabouts with extra crossings and the new speed limit (the Low-Cost option, in essence our 4,700+ petition) would be a safer option. The after-thought Executive Summary “recommendations” lack legitimacy because they (a) exceed the brief and (b) are technically untenable —lacking [i] a proper economic audit, [ii] a study of east/west traffic, transversal congestion & rat-running in adjacent areas, [iii] the required democratic involvement by the stake-holding communities from both sides of the border, [iv] a sustainability study, etc.

Cllr Willis’ statement that the cost of putting the roundabouts back will be 'tens of thousands', not hundreds of thousands, makes sense given that most of the money was wasted on expensive CCTV and bus-priority systems technology. The real costs of NOT returning the roundabouts (work-hours wasted in queues, extra fuel used on residential rat-runs, long-term maintenance cost of traffic lights, etc.) must be taken into account. Also, an independent study of transport efficiency in Reading, including bus subsidies, is required to put Cllr Page’s dogmatism into perspective.

Incidentally, the Council is in breach of government policy (no economic appraisal as yet). The December 2010 businesses “survey” mentioned by Cllr Page is unethical and thus useless because of its leading questions. The managers of ‘cloned’ shops had no authority (and business owners didn’t feel the need) to publicise commercially sensitive figures; hence the single reply received by the Council, which needs to move away from corrupt into professional surveys and methods.

TRL found in 1996 (copy available from STAG) that roundabouts are safer for older pedestrians and drivers than the “signalised junctions” that the Head of Transport imposed on us. She misled everyone, including a Leader for Transport, on safety. Why has she not been indicted yet?

Pat Baxter stated under FOI that the plan started over 10 years ago, so ‘safety’ is an opportunistic excuse which has been discredited by TRL. Not even the 5 extra crossings can give the new setup a safety gain, so Cllr Page is again mentioning deaths. The one that happened by a roundabout might have been avoided had RBC placed crossings in line with the increase in shops and traffic at the time, as people had demanded. Waiting 10 years while working out how to milk the taxpayer makes Cllr Page partly responsible for those accidents. Why has he not resigned yet?

The Council promised to monitor the situation, but denied us the means to do it (e.g. a meter at St Barnabas). And this is how it goes on. RBC gives off as much hot air and noise as the polluting cars held at the lights, engine-idling and radio-blasting on our doorsteps. Tinkering will be a further waste of money and will worsen this problem. Only roundabouts can strike the balance between the commerce/traffic-flow needs of the local centre and the residents’ environmental concerns.

Recommend? Yes 3 No 1

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