1 March 2004
Time to think road safety out again
The proposal by Suffolk County Council to put a ridiculous 50mph limit on the only half-decent road link between Norwich and Ipswich is typical of that county’s blinkered approach to road management.
It may be significant that whereas Norfolk’s roads supremo, Adrian Gunson, has the title of cabinet member for transport and planning, his Suffolk counterpart, Peter Monk , is the portfolio holder for public protection. Presumably Suffolk is not specifically interested in traffic and planning, but it is not very good at public protection either.
The county is well known for introducing blanket 30mph limits through all its villages in 1995, without any regard for whether such a limit was appropriate. All the statistics since then show that it was a mistake: before, casualties were reducing by an average of 171 per year; since the change, they have increased by an average of 51 per year. What about fatalities? The trend is similar. In fact last year 59 people died on Suffolk’s roads, compared to 43 the previous year. Mr Monk admitted when those figures were released: “The fatality figures sadly do not reflect the continued efforts by the county council and the police to reduce the number of deaths on our roads.”
Yet in considering the 50mph limit for the A140, he says: “It will, as we’ve proved with other measures across the county, reduce the number of accidents.”
You may think this thinking is not entirely consistent. But he is not alone. Simon Stevens, of Suffolk police, seems not to be aware of the poor safety record in Suffolk. He says: “Once new speed limits or traffic restrictions are set, we will enforce them. Our main aim in Suffolk is to make the county the safest it can possibly be.”
Commendable. So why continue with a policy that obviously doesn’t work?
It is not simply Norfolk pride that makes me praise Mr Gunson’s view that “I don’t think that more lower speed limits will solve their problem.
“I believe a lot of the accidents are caused by right-turning traffic and overtaking, due to frustration with the tailbacks caused by heavy traffic and by slow-moving cars, lorries and farm vehicles.
“In my view, roads like the A140 – and similar roads in Norfolk as well – need right-turning lanes put in at the junctions for the villages and dual carriageway bypasses for the bigger communities, such as Stonham, Thwaite and Stoke Ash.”
It’s just common sense, as was the welcome remark last week by Michael Edney, casualty reduction officer for Norfolk police, when he reported that traffic police were tackling nine accident blackspots in the county. Speed was not a major issue at any of them, he said. “It’s all down to driver error.”
Common sense costs money, of course, but lives are more important than cash or dogma. It’s time that Suffolk reviewed the situation and came to the same conclusion as Fagin in Oliver Twist: “I think I'd better think it out again!”
Council digs up free parking
Last time I suggested that the distinguished ladies and gentlemen responsible for transport and highways in Norwich had completely lost the plot in their so-called improvements to the central part of North Park Avenue, and were drifting in a different galaxy.
Now they have returned and have found a way to retrieve the situation – in the sense of getting some of the money back.
Where is it coming from? You guessed it – from the residents who are already infuriated by the way the changes were made. The council is planning to introduce permit parking in the area.
This is fine at the Bluebell Road end, where university overspill cars are a blight, but in the central section it simply means that residents who could previously park perfectly safely off road for nothing now have to park on the road and pay the council. It is no safer and no more attractive. Just more expensive. Wonderful. Who says the Liberal Democrats don’t have a coherent transport policy?
Recycling empty gestures
As a keen environmentalist, I welcomed the city council’s decision to give me a recycling box in which to insert newspapers and bottles. These, I was told, were to be emptied every fortnight – and to begin with, they were. Since Christmas they have been emptied once. And on the one occasion that the elusive emptiers put in an appearance they managed to drop a bottle and smash it. An attempt was made to clear the glass up, but when this proved less than successful, the rest of the glass was side-footed under a nearby car.
To the council, this may seem like recycling. To the residents of the street where I live, surrounded by waste paper and empty bottles, it seems more like an empty gesture.
War identification problem
You may have heard that our D-Day heroes are going to receive lottery funding to return to the beaches of Normandy this year – the 60th anniversary of the landings.
An excellent idea, but some of them are beginning to suspect that accessing the funding might require heroism of a rather different nature.
One veteran who rang up found he needed to quote his registration number – not a number that most people would be able to turn up easily. He told the young man on the end of the phone: “I have a war pension.”
“Oh?” responded the youth. “Which war was that?”
Beagle linked to whales in knot theory
The recent discovery near Reepham of the missing Mars explorer Beagle 2 has caused consternation in the world of cosmologists.
Len “Kissme” Hardy, from Hindolveston, an expert in unusual technology and some pies, claims that several interstellar vehicles have turned up in mid-Norfolk. This has not been widely publicised in order to avoid embarrassing scientists, who tend to stick to the same story through thick or thin.
“Beagle 2 got there as a direct result of the Big Bang,” said Mr Hardy. “And you know what caused that. Or maybe you don’t.”
Unfortunately the Mars explorer vehicle has since gone missing again. Professor V A R Scheinlich explains: “Knot theory – my version of string theory which is now widely accepted in Hingham – reveals that vehicles such as Beagle 2 contain a secret device that enables them to move from one dimension to another.”
He believes that Beagle 2’s movement through space-time is linked to the sudden appearance of a number of whales on the North Norfolk coast.
“It’s excessive for the time of year,” he said. “I believe that whales will soon be discovered on Mars. It’s the only explanation.
“It’s certainly nothing to do with global warming. That’s just ridiculous.”