* Traffic expert Ben Hamilton-Baillie addresses the Town Hall audience.
THE scrapping of traffic lights at the A5 junction, the creation of special
zones to help slow down vehicles as they enter the town and flattening of kerbs
on the bridge.
These were amongst the suggestions put forward by a visiting expert to ease
traffic problems on Llangollen’s busy Castle Street at a public meeting last
night (Tuesday).
Earlier this year the Cittaslow Llangollen group, which aims to improve
local quality of life, ran a crowd funding scheme to collect enough money to
get renowned traffic engineer Ben Hamilton-Baillie to take a look at the town’s
main street and suggest solutions to deal with snarl-ups.
After spending the day analysing conditions in and around Castle Street he
presented his findings to a meeting in the Town Hall.
Mr Hamilton-Baillie has an impressive track record of
producing schemes to cure traffic headaches in towns across the UK and abroad,
all based on balancing out the competing requirements of drivers and pedestrians.
He told an audience of about 60 people, including
representatives of the town and county councils, that while he did not have any
solutions he would offer a number of ideas to improve Castle Street which could
form the basis of future discussion.
Explaining that many towns were now filled with “expensive
kit” such as signs, signals and lights, to control traffic, Llangollen was
“nowhere near as bad” as some other places.
He went on to give examples of schemes he had worked on,
including London’s Exhibition Road and Poynton in Cheshire, where measures put
in place to slow down traffic and create pedestrian areas even at once-busy
junctions had been highly successful.
These had been based on introducing features such as paved
areas which could be shared by vehicles and pedestrians.
Stressing that it was a “great mistake to treat drivers as
idiots,” Mr Hamilton-Baillie that determining the safe speed at which vehicles
could pass through a town centre was crucial to success and provided the basis
for all other aspects of a scheme.
He also said that while red lights could be useful to stop
traffic in some cases, he did not like to give motorists a green light, which
suggested they were free to speed ahead when traffic lights change.
Giving instances of where lights had been removed completely
making no difference to safety, he said: “I’m not sure the signals at the
junction of the A5 and Castle Street are necessary. I would do something else.”
He also explained the importance of clearly defining the
places where vehicles should change from highway driving to a much slower
style.
In Llangollen, with its two main roads, he suggested the
creation of paved areas in the road to highlight these spots – around the Sarah
Ponsonby pub in Mill Street and in front of St John’s Church in Abbey Road on
the A539/A542 and near the end of Brook Street and the junction of
Market Street on the A5.
Mr Hamilton-Baillie also suggested the creation of
pedestrian areas in Queen Square and around Royal Gardens, site of the town’s
war memorial, to help slow down traffic passing along Castle Street.
Another of his ideas to achieve the same aim was to flatten
the kerbs on the bridge.
Other possibilities were the re-siting of pedestrian
crossings in front of the Bridge End Hotel and close to Stan’s supermarket to more
practical areas for pedestrians.
On the often thorny issue of parking along a stretch of
Castle Street, he said it was “no bad thing” for traffic to have to pause as it
passed the row of cars.
However, he said it would be more practical to have short
blocks of parking rather than one long line as at present.
At the end of his hour-long presentation, which was followed
by a question and answer session, Mr Hamilton-Baillie told the audience:
“Llangollen is not in crisis but you need to have a clear vision of which way
you want to go.”
Town councillor Phil
Thane, who arranged the exercise, said Mr Hamilton-Baillie’s ideas would be
discussed by the town council at its meeting this week and there could then be
discussions between the authority and Denbighshire County Council.
INTREPID members of Valley Girls WI proved
their organisation isn’t all “Jam and Jerusalem” by taking the water – 38
metres above the ground.
