Greens call for measures to reduce air pollution along Boot Hill and a more balanced assessment of the “success” of the Weymouth Transport Package.
Following last year’s survey by the Green Party in Rodwell, we have been working to represent residents’ views to the council, particularly on the most contentious issue, the new traffic arrangements outside Asda and along Boot Hill.
In the survey, we asked if the new junctions along Boot Hill and outside Asda worked. 71% of the 553 people/households who responded thought they did not. Most wanted the roundabouts back, a significant number wanted the no left turns into Wyke and Chickerell Roads removed, and many complained about traffic queues. There was also concern about surrounding roads, e.g. Cross Rd and Everest Rd, being used as ‘rat runs’.
Clare Sutton, our candidate for Rodwell at this year’s elections, took these concerns to the Traffic Managers at Dorset County Council. Clare says, “To their credit, they said they will not walk away from any problems and are actively monitoring the junctions. But we are calling for Councillors to give a more balanced assessment of the “success” of the scheme, and we need to see more action to reduce air pollution along Boot Hill.”
Boot Hill and Asda Junctions
At the meeting at Dorset County Council, traffic managers maintained that they are aware of the issue at the Asda crossroads and modifying the junction is not off the agenda. They say that some drivers are not observing the correct procedure at the Asda lights: a green light means proceed with caution (in other words give way if necessary), whereas a green arrow means you have right of way.
Officials said the no-left-turn from Rodwell Road into Wyke Road is necessary if there is to be a pedestrian crossing across Rodwell Road there. The council is rightly pursuing a policy to encourage people to walk and cycle rather than drive and the no-left-turn allows a safe crossing although it could in theory be moved up the hill if enough people felt it was important to access Wyke Road this way.
Traffic along Boot Hill has reduced since the junctions were changed with more traffic travelling along Lanehouse Rocks Road. However, congestion and air pollution remain problems on Boot Hill in particular.
The bus priority signalling is being trialled at present at two junctions to be followed by a further 5 junctions in the near future. The locations of these are being arranged with First Buses. We have asked for Boot Hill to be one of these trial points because of the pollution problem there.
Levels of air pollution on Boot Hill are among the worst in Weymouth and close to the legal limit. Whilst the UK government generally ignores this serious threat to our health, the Green Party is campaigning to improve air quality. On this issue, we believe we need to do the following:
- Aim for a further reduction in traffic along Boot Hill by diverting it to other less densely-populated routes such as Lanehouse Rocks Road. The movable roadside signs could be used to encourage this. Supermarkets should be encouraged to run their fleets along other routes, too.
- For those vehicles which have to use Boot Hill we should aim to reduce their emissions. Bus companies should be encouraged to upgrade their buses running this route to newer models with cleaner emissions. We have asked traffic officials to consider the idea of encouraging people to turn off their engines instead of idling whilst they wait in queues
- Reduce overall traffic in Weymouth. Obviously this is far more ambitious but by far the best solution in the long term that will lead to a better quality of life for us all. This can be done by encouraging people to share their cars, or travel by other means: walking, cycling or public transport. Council officials said they will look into encouraging people to car share through use of their mobile road signs.
- We welcome recent news that Dorset Highways were successful in a £2.4 million bid for funds from the Local Sustainable Transport Fund. This will go towards measures to encourage walking, cycling and use of public transport in both Weymouth and Dorchester. We look forward to businesses and individuals taking up the opportunities to make Weymouth a better place to be.
- the Borough Council needs to publish all their air quality data
Assessing The Weymouth Transport Package
The junction changes along Boot Hill and by Asda were done as part of the Weymouth Transport Package, a £14 million investment from the Department of Transport (ultimately the taxpayer of course), £10.5 million of which went on junction improvements.
The 1 year report (available here as a 7MB pdf file) on monitoring the package was published in January 2013 and Peter Finney, the outgoing County Council cabinet member for Highways and Transport claimed “The transport package has largely delivered what it set out to”. He claimed journey times have improved for all traffic and that pedestrian safety had been improved.
Below, we examine the report in more detail and show that many of the council’s claims are highly questionable. We also think the next report should include some independent thinking. The last report was done by the council into its own work – they are marking their own homework. We are calling on the new head of Highways and Transport, Councillor Hilary Cox, to give a more balanced assessment of the scheme when the 2 year report is published later this year and to address the continuing problem of air pollution along Boot Hill.
One of the biggest findings of the report with relevance for Boot Hill is that according to their figures, traffic along Boot Hill has gone down from 26,000 vehicles a day to 21,000. This is partly because overall traffic has reduced slightly (owing to the economic downturn), but mainly that people are diverting their route along Lanehouse Rocks Road. The data used (page 11 of the report) compared April/May 2008 with September/October 2012. We accept this use of “neutral season” data but we think it would be better to compare like with like. We asked the council to use data from April/May 2013 for the next report and we were pleased to see road counting being done during those months this year.
The Council then claim to have improved journey times for all traffic. However, the quoted 26% improvement applies only to vehicles travelling Northbound between 5 and 6pm (page 21 of the report). Journey times during the day decreased by around 14% whilst times in the morning rush hour increased. The worst journey times before the road works were Southbound between 5 and 6pm so why the Northbound figure was cherry-picked to represent all journey times is not clear. Could it possibly be because it had the biggest improvement? Not for us to say! The decrease in traffic along the corridor would be expected to cause a decrease in journey times anyway, so we remain unconvinced that the new junction changes on Boot Hill and at Asda are an improvement on roundabouts.
Screenshot of the County Council website “news” report. Click for the full article.
So what of the other claims?
“Pedestrian safety has been improved”
We hope this is the case. It is right to point out that there are now many safe crossing places for pedestrians. However, it is too soon to claim that “safety has improved” – 3 or preferably 5 years are needed to show a statistical difference in safety as the report makes clear on page 24. The data for King Street shows fewer accidents in the year after opening than the yearly average for 5 years before the works and we hope this continues to be the case.
We asked for the accident statistics for Boot Hill and the Asda crossroads in January 2013. The works at the Asda crossroads and along Boot Hill were finished towards the end of January 2011. Comparing the available data for the 21 months after this period and 21 months before the works began, there were two accidents at the Harbour (Asda) crossroads after the works and two before the works. The two before the works involved pedestrians/cyclists whereas afterwards they involved vehicles only.
Along the Boot Hill corridor, accidents increased from two accidents before the works to five accidents afterwards (and two of those five were serious). However, we are NOT claiming that safety has got worse along this stretch of road. Indeed, looking in detail at these accident reports, there seems to be no single obvious cause. We should all wait the minimum three years or until road safety officials analyse the data in detail before making claims about road safety.
“Air quality has improved”
Having seen some of the figures we agree that air pollution has gone down which would be expected from the 24% reduction in traffic along Boot Hill.However, the levels are around or just under the legal limit of 40 µg/m3- the worst in Weymouth. So, the pollution is still bad and this is the experience of residents along Boot Hill. The reduction in pollution is to be welcomed but the Council should be looking at ways to reduce it further.
In Conclusion
When Councillor Peter Finney says “The transport package has largely delivered what it set out to” we think this is a distortion of the truth. We are calling on Councillor Hillary Cox, the new cabinet member for Highways and Transport, to give a more balanced assessment of the “success” of the scheme. We think the council should be more circumspect before claiming safety improvements, and more transparent on journey times, and we need to see more action to reduce air pollution along Boot Hill.
West & South Dorset Green Party
