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Smith Drive / Withers Avenue Warning!


Bill

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I live near to Smith Dr on a main road. Despite regular accidents (must learn to drive), speeding and some residence using the footpath as access to their drives the police do nothing!

 

While we are on Smith Dr, for years buses have had problems emerging from Smith Dr by the park. Now there is a vacant lot on the corner maybe the opportunity to improve the junction should be taken.

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I live near to Smith Dr on a main road. Despite regular accidents (must learn to drive), speeding and some residence using the footpath as access to their drives the police do nothing!

 

While we are on Smith Dr, for years buses have had problems emerging from Smith Dr by the park. Now there is a vacant lot on the corner maybe the opportunity to improve the junction should be taken.

I did ask, especially when it seemed the current economic situation means they're not rushing to build the new bungalows on the site. There are plenty of drivers (including those turning right into Smith Drive!) who know to give the bus room to turn out. Cost of changing the layout (e.g. enough to enable buses to turn without swinging onto the other side of the road) and paying compensation for a CPO would be enormous for the benefit gained. Just a reminder that there was a scheme to create physical barriers to through traffic (one way streets etc) a few years ago, which had the support of most residents, but there were some objections, a Labour member missed the traffic committee and the Lib Dem and Conservative members supported the objection, and voted it down, and there seems little likelihood of getting an agreed scheme now. It's been interesting to see that whenever the residents demand enforcement, it raises the issue of why through traffic is banned - before alterations on Padgate Lane / Orford Road, it just sent more traffic along roads near Oakwood school. The traffic diverted onto Hallfields Road eventually needed the lights at the junction with Orford Green to avoid queues of people turning right.

 

While we're at it, those lights, and the double mini-roundabouts at Norris Street, seem to me to be examples of where our traffic engineers got it right.... Queues still at school / rush hour, but way better than before.

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Question, will Smith Drive become a 20mph road when the changes come in given it's on a bus route? And also are there any plans to lift any other transport restrictions such as road bumps?

 

 

Bill :)

It will be within the 20 mph zone. http://www.warrington.gov.uk/info/200861/20mph_speed_limits/964/2_timetable_for_implementation

 

And we'll not be spending money taking out humps.

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It's been interesting to see that whenever the residents demand enforcement, it raises the issue of why through traffic is banned - before alterations on Padgate Lane / Orford Road, it just sent more traffic along roads near Oakwood school. The traffic diverted onto Hallfields Road eventually needed the lights at the junction with Orford Green to avoid queues of people turning right.

 

 

 

I an seriously confused now!!!

 

There is no access from Smith Dr to Oakwood School, is there?

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It will be within the 20 mph zone. http://www.warrington.gov.uk/info/200861/20mph_speed_limits/964/2_timetable_for_implementation

 

And we'll not be spending money taking out humps.

 

Cos you've spent all the money on this folly of a 20mph limit nonsense.... 7 or 800 grand to achieve a miniscule reduction in average speed limits and all because some lycra clad cycle mob think that roads should be shared spaces used by pedestrians and bikes as well as cars.... ignoring the fact that there are cycle lanes almost everywhere that none of them will use. When I was a kid, my mum and dad taught me some sense and told me not to walk in the road but to use the footpaths.... but that's another story!

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To clarify: to avoid Smith/Withers, the quickest way to Padgate from Norris Street was via Gorsey lane, then Steel St or Oakwood Ave - the latter still possible eastbound but only by negotiating fearsome humps but Steel St is now a cul-de-sac. It meant traffic was banned from wide residential roads and diverted along a narrow street past a school (and with the queues to get out at the top of Hallfields Road, before the lights went in, that wasn't an attractive alternative).

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"I need access officer because this is the way my sat nav brought me...." :D

 

'Well Officer.....No 68 is for sale.......I am just driving past to see if it's still for sale and to have a look at the outside' How do they prove otherwise? especially that No68 is for sale (and it is....I checked this morning !!!

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It meant traffic was banned from wide residential roads and diverted along a narrow street past a school (and with the queues to get out at the top of Hallfields Road, before the lights went in, that wasn't an attractive alternative).

 

rather then spending lots of money blocking off roads and putting in road humps why was the wide residential roads not reopened.

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They don’t teach learner drivers to drive in dangerous areas, none the less some just don’t like “their” roads being used by those that don’t live there. That was one of the main arguments used in Paddington after all the other through routes between Woolston and Padgate had speed humps installed. Ironically, now that every route has speed bumps, we still have just as many learner drivers and through traffic so we’re exactly back where we started from.

 

Bill :)

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Think you might have missed my point Baz.

 

Quiet residential roads, speed bumps or not, are where the driving schools tend to go but the residents then object. Bottom line is that it’s a nimby situation where they don’t want any traffic other than for residential access and while they’ll tell you this to your face, when it comes to applying to the council they say it’s all about speed and safety.

 

It’s all too easy for a small nimby type group to approach a local councillor, play the safety card and they have to respond. An access only road ads value to a property and sadly many of those campaigning for them do so for this very reason.

 

Bet this makes me popular. :|

 

Bill :)

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