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Traffic calming in the village.
Work continues both in terms of research into traffic calming measures and sources of funding.
Traffic calming has two approaches which could be termed physical and psychological. Working almost at different ends of the scale. On the one hand it comprises of narrowing roads by cross hatching , priority to oncoming traffic, wider islands and so forth. The other school of thought is to create a driving environment that causes the driver to slow down due to uncertainty and even confusion. This is usually achieved by the removal of all ‘street furniture’ and road markings except those required by law such as speed limit signs. Councillor Pearce has been in touch with Norfolk County Council who have carried out research into this and we have a copy of their work which is available on this website. Click here
Following the feedback from the recent questionnaire the number one priority in the village was speeding traffic. Many people linked some of the priorities together and we can include road improvements, HGVs and even footpaths since this was linked to cycleways and safe cycling for youngsters in particular.
Councillors Mrs Berrow, Mrs Curry and Patrick Mullins attended the Local Area Forum meeting (for more information see this section of the website) where the feedback from all the villages in the forum were combined. It was interesting that the combined results mirrored our own with speeding being the number one priority.
As a result of that it was decided to propose the formation a sub group under the Local Area Forum to look at traffic calming and this would initially be organised by Jackie Wesley, Localities & Communities Manager from Bucks County Council, someone from the road safety team at BCC, Ben Blunt, vice chairman of Pitstone Parish Council, Patrick Mullins from Stoke Hammond and support from the local police team. The purpose of all this is of course to seek funding for this. We are also trying to find out why traffic calming measures promised for Stoke Hammond from the bypass project were never carried out.
Through the work of the Parish Council Traffic Calming subcommittee chairman of the subcommittee, Patrick Mullins, has also joined the Beacon Freight Quality Partnership. This is a working group formed to liaise with the freight industry primarily to look at appropriate use of rural roads by HGVs. This is attracting quite a lot of industry interest including VOSA, RHA and recently Arla the dairy company building a huge dairy processing plant near Aston Clinton. The first meeting attended was on 21 March and minutes can be found by following the link on this website.
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