Drop-In public consultation session on North Shore, Whitehaven plans at Tescos this afternoon

Residents of Whitehaven and others with an interest in traffic in the town are reminded that the second of two "Drop-in" public consultation sessions on the proposed highway improvements in the North Shore area will be held this afternoon and evening (Monday 23rd April 2018), from 3pm-7pm at the Tesco Superstore, Bransty Row, Whitehaven, CA28 7XY.

Details of the consultation on Cumbria County Council's proposals to improve road safety and traffic flows in the North Shore/Bransty Row area can be found on the council website at


The proposed scheme includes:
  • introduction of traffic light controls on Bransty Row/North Shore Road junction
  • improved pedestrian crossing points and links between the harbour, the new developments and the town centre's historic core
  • enhancement of the road junction at Tangier Street/George Street to improve traffic flow and facilitate development
  • relocation of southbound bus stop on Bransty Row and northbound bus stop to Tangier Street relocation and tripling of provision for taxis to reflect forecast increased footfall in the area
  • reduction of the speed limit from 30mph to 20mph on a section of Bransty Row
  • public realm improvements to enhance the gateway into Whitehaven.

Local residents and anyone with an interest in the proposals are invited to have their say and let  Cumbria County Council know your views.

It is worth adding that there are a number of planned developments in this part of town and it is the opinion of both highway officers and councillors that if those developments go ahead without anything being done to improve this stretch of road, traffic on the key Northern entrance and exit to the centre of Whitehaven will become seriously congested.

There is also a worrying accident rate among road users in this area of the town, particularly for pedestrians, and we want to make the area safer for road users.

I am not going to pretend that I think this scheme is perfect, but it is a considerable improvement on what is there now. The council has to make a decision this year or lose the opportunity to act, because the government has given a substantial but time-limited grant to improve traffic flows and road safety in the area and facilitate economic development. 

Comments

Anonymous said…
"There is also a worrying accident rate among road users in this area of the town, particularly for pedestrians, and we want to make the area safer for road users." - Not for pedestrians then.

There is virtually no consideration of pedestrians.
Access from Bransty, the Station, even Tesco's to the Harbour or town hasn't been considered. Crossing George street or Tangier Street also hasn't been considered.

All that has been considered is vehicular access to and from North Shore Road, and a reduction in pavement space for pedestrians.

It is in essence £2.5 million for a set of traffic lights.

6:21 pm
Jim said…
I still maintain, a roundabout at the bottom of bransty, some zebras, and a better junction between tangier and george street would be better, in fact merge the lot, build a roundabout to serve bransty and the traffic exiting tesco, put in some zebras, for pedestrians, then look to build on the bus station site


7:51 pm
Chris Whiteside said…
Pedestrians are road users and considerable effort has gone into trying to make it safer to cross the road in the current proposals.

There is a great deal more to this scheme than a set of traffic lights, including widening the road, better sight lines, signal controlled crossing points, moving a bus stop, moving and increasing the number of taxi rank places.

Access from Bransty is now being looked at again in the light of the feedback from the consultation sessions. The other items mentioned in the first post above had indeed all been considered.

Both councillors and members of the public have asked about the possibilities of using roundabouts. The highways planners who drew up the scheme don't think a roundabout can be made to work efficiently with the space available and that it would be hard to combine a roundabout with the measures being included in the current proposals to provide safer crossing points for pedestrians.

If you have views or concerns on the issue please have a look at the proposals, of which the details can be found online at the site linked to in the main post above, and then email your comments or queries about the improvements to: npif@cumbria.gov.uk

or you can feed them in by post to:

David Haughian
Cumbria County Council
Parkhouse Building
The Parkhouse Building
Kingmoor Business Park
Carlisle
CA6 4SJ
12:46 am
Chris Whiteside said…
Intelligent and constructive comments on this blog are always welcome, although childish insults will be deleted.

However, if you want to influence this scheme, feeding your comments in to the officers who are carrying out the current official consultation using the methods described in the main post and the comment immediately above is the best way to do so.
1:05 am
Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Nick Herbert on his visit to flood hit areas of Cumbria

Please note that the post below was published more than ten year ago on 21st November 2009 Nick Herbert MP, shadow cabinet member for the Environment, Food, and Rural Affairs, was in Cumbria this morning to see the areas affected by the flooding. He writes on Conservative Home about his visit. Here is an extract. I’ve been in Cumbria today to see the areas affected by the floods. I arrived early in Keswick where I met officials from the Environment Agency. Although the river levels had fallen considerably and homes were no longer flooded, the damage to homes had been done. And the water which had got into houses wasn’t just from the river – it was foul water which had risen from the drains. I talked to fire crews who were pumping flood water back into the river, and discovered that they were from Tyne & Wear and Lancashire. They had been called in at an hours’ notice and had been working on the scene ever since, staying at a local hotel. You cannot fail to be impressed by the...
Read more

Quotes of the day 19th August 2020

Image
"Wise men profit more from fools than fools from wise men; for the wise men shun the mistakes of fools, but fools do not imitate the successes of the wise."  ( Cato the Elder , who lived 234 BC - 149 BC, quoted in "Lives" by Plutarch.) There is a similar saying by Germany's Iron Chancellor, Otto von Bismarck: Benjamin Franklin is supposed to have put the same saying in a more humorous form: "Wise men profit by the mistakes of others, while fools will not learn even from their own blunders." See also this thread on the "Quote Investigator" website . Let us all be wise and learn from the events of the last few days.
Read more

Quote of the day 24th July 2020

I was moved to put the passage below forward as a quote today when I saw a horrible post on twitter from someone writing that it was "excellent" that someone who took a different view from her about Brexit had died. I won't write which way round it was so that all the Remain supporters can assume the post was from a Brexit fanatic welcoming the death of a remainer and all the Leavers can assume it was a Remainiac welcoming one less Brexiteer. There's been plenty of nasty stuff on both sides but if you catch anyone of your own viewpoint  posting something like that who might listen to you, please do call them out on it - and point out that they're giving everyone on your side of the argument a bad name. Anyway, here's the quote from John Donne.
Read more