The One Way System

The one way arrangement appears to me to be "half a job" and it simply leaves a lot of unresolved problems. The southern stretch of Oxford Street remains "two way" despite the fact that it is this bit that causes many of the current traffic snarl ups. (At the moment, it suffers from the traffic lights at the railway bridge, the nightmare mini-roundabout at the junction with Cromwell Road and parking outside the Co-Op supermarket and two local schools).

The retention of two way traffic in both Cromwell Road and southern Oxford Street will necessitate  retention of the mini roundabout or, at the very least, the creation of a junction of some kind. Thus we will get a continuation of the snarl ups caused by a busy cross flow of traffic within yards of a set of traffic lights. The situation would be eased to some extent if Oxford Street was one-way northbound from the current site of the roundabout and Cromwell Rd was one-way southbound. Such a system would allow a better flow of traffic and even cater for some parking in the vicinity of the Co-Op.

Admittedly the proposed KCC system will significantly reduce southbound traffic in Oxford Street BUT it will not remove it altogether. Visitors to West Beach and three of the towns main car parks (ie Cushings View, Middle Wall and Shaftesbury) are going to seek ways of avoiding the long haul around the one way system and Cromwell Road. Nelson Road and the "two-way" southern section of Oxford Street will provide the outlet and this will increase traffic in congested roads such as Island Wall, Nelson Road, Cornwallis Circle, Waterloo Road and Shaftesbury Avenue. The "escape route" will also feed cars across both the main flow of northbound traffic in Oxford Street and the southbound traffic emerging from Cromwell Road.

Under the proposed system, the southern section of Oxford Street will need to be kept completely clear in order to support a two way traffic flow. Without a whole army of traffic wardens, drivers will still park outside the Co-Op and many of the problems will remain.

The report also suggests that it may be necessary to prevent access to Terrys Lane from the High Street. If this suggestion was followed, the only way to Cushing's view car park would be via narrow, "two way" Middle Wall or Nelson Road.

Despite the reference to modification to the traffic flow in Terry's Lane, the report doesn't mention Middle Wall. If there was ever a road that needed to be  "one-way", Middle Wall is it!!!! It serves the town's most popular car park and yet it is so narrow in places that two cars cannot pass each other.  

Harbour Street

The pedestrianisation of Harbour Street  is not straightforward. It will actually knock out one of the town's main bus lay-bys. In fact, that locality is pretty much Whitstable's bus terminus and it is also a dropping off point for coaches. On top of this, we will also lose a whole string of prime on-street parking spaces.

These may not be insurmountable issues BUT they should have been acknowledged and fully addressed in the document. As should the next, related issue......

Victoria Street Car Park

This is one of the town centre's most popular car parks..... and it would be isolated from the main traffic flow by the pedestrianisation of Harbour Street. The KCC document makes light of this by suggesting that access would be from Albert Street..... BUT HOW?!!!! Are they suggesting that drivers should reach it by negotiating the labyrinth of back streets, on street parking and pedestrian precincts of central Whitstable. 

Will visitors ever locate it? What happens when they get there and find it's full? What will it do to "backstreet" traffic levels and the on-street parking so desperately needed by the local residents?

Without a map, I can't even think of  the most convenient route to the car park via the back streets!!!! There is going to have to be an awful lot of sign posting... and a whole lot more to guide visitors out of the mess when they try to go home!!!!

I love the document's comment that providing access from Albert Street "will require some re-arrangement within the car park"! Strewth, it's going to be nothing compared to the rearrangements needed outside it if you want to make Albert Street accessible to visitors!!!!! Nowadays, it's barely accessible to locals!!!!

Cromwell Road

I already hate the two way Cromwell Road as it is now! It's a mess with frequent congestion caused by traffic calming measures, on street parking spaces and the narrow width of usable carriageway. It is a total nonsense to suggest that all south bound traffic should now be added to this "two way" carnage. Even if you wanted to make such a scheme "half work", the road would have to be revamped on a significant scale and at considerable cost. I suspect that it would also be necessary to remove quite a bit of residents parking.

If Cromwell Road is to be designated as the main south bound route for through traffic, it simply HAS to become "one-way".

Buses

Here we have a problem that has been discussed many times in connection with previous town centre "one-way" proposals - ie that buses from Tankerton will proceed via Cromwell Road and by-pass the town centre with their load of elderly and disabled shoppers. The KCC document acknowledges this BUT goes nowhere near addressing the issue. It simply fobs us off with the words..... "Early consultation with bus operators will be required if the scheme is to succeed". 

How can anyone put proposals to the Joint Transportation Board without, at least, making some preliminary enquiries on such a contentious matter. How many years do we have to wait before someone actually picks up the telephone and talks to a bus company?

Loading Restrictions

I am amazed that we haven't heard more from the business community on this one!!!! So, perhaps I am wrong in wondering how town centre shops can cope with a "7-day per week" ban on loading between 8.30 am to 6.30 pm! Maybe big supermarkets can convince their suppliers that they should deliver outside these times but how does a small trader manage it?

Park and Ride

I find the arguments on this quite bizarre. The document actually lists a number of disadvantages. These include....

• a high subsidy per passenger - one that will continue to be an ongoing cost in the future 

• dependence on the goodwill of the private car park owners

• prohibitive costs if the goodwill is withdrawn and dedicated parks need to be provided

• some bus inefficiency caused by town centre traffic jams

• the need for bus services to penetrate the local road network!!!!

• the small amount of usage by local residents

It then ignores these in favour of some pretty shaky advantages based on statistics collected from the "9 weekend" Park and Ride trials during the summer of 2009.

Firstly, it harps on about the the P&R parks being full (200 cars) during the Oyster Festival and Bank Holiday weekends. So what? We local residents can find ourselves stuck in town centre traffic jams on any of 365 days of the year - not just the 5 main days of P&R!!!! The provision of special facilities during key festivals is really "event management". It is NOT general traffic management.

The document then goes on to boast that, for the other 7 weekends of the trial, the P&R car parks handled around 70 cars per day. Big deal! Just how much did that help given that the document quotes the general Oxford Street traffic flow (two way) as being 9,500 vehicles for a 24 hour period. P&R reduced this by just 140 vehicles and, at the same time, added approx 80 bus trips back onto the total (based on the P&R timetable announced before the trial started)!!!!

The "9 weekend" experiment of 2009 was subsidised to the tune of a cool £20,000. Based on the figures quoted above, my maths suggest that the whole experiment may have handled around 2000 cars at an individual subsidy of £10 per vehicle. If that is correct, it's one hell of a drain on tax payers for something that didn't seem to make a significant difference to the lives of local people.... even if it did make the day exciting for the Fortescue-Smythes of South Kensington. Blimey, if our local authorities are handing out tenners to keep cars out of the High Street at peak times, let's dish the dosh locally. I'll happily keep my beloved Mazda in the garage on August Bank Holiday Monday. In fact, I'll do it for a fiver.... and spend it at Tesco.

In these circumstances, how can anyone recommend a subsidised P&R when we are suffering cuts to so many of our public services? In fact, rather than considering if P&R should be continued in the future, we should, perhaps, be asking why it was ever trialled in the first place. Surely, initial studies should have identified any subsidy issues and highlighted them for public discussion before implementation took place. 

The Wider Issues and The Big Criticism

Now let me outline my biggest objection. 

If the town centre is to prosper it needs to provide easy access from all over town. At the moment, there are four key routes in....

1. via Belmont Road
2. via Railway Avenue and Cromwell Road
3. via Tower Parade and Harbour Street
4. via Borstal Hill/Joy Lane and Canterbury Rd

In recent years, Belmont Road has become a no-go area for many people due to its narrow carriageway, on-street parking and annoying junction with Canterbury Road.

Under the proposed scheme, we face a clogged up Cromwell Road and we will lose the Tower Parade/Harbour Street entrance to the town centre. 

That leaves the Canterbury Road approach - with its own perennial traffic jams and annoying traffic lights. 

Of course, we could use the Park and Ride - with its limited 200 car capacity, passenger charges and inconvenience. On the other hand, our route along the Thanet Way to the P&R car parks will take us within spitting distance of the free car parks of Sainsbury, B&Q and Tesco. So, why go any further?

In designing a town centre traffic system, it really is necessary to look beyond the central issues to see how cars will actually feed into the system from other areas. That will often highlight problems some distance away.

The Funnel Effect

If we further analyse the three remaining key roads through, into and (to some extent) out of the town centre (ie Belmont Road, Cromwell Road and Canterbury Road), we get an even more worrying picture. Whilst these may appear to be diverse routes, they actually have one common feature. They all share the weakest section of the proposed traffic system - ie the bottleneck of south Oxford Street between the mini-roundabout and traffic lights.

Every time the traffic lights change to red, much of the system will come to a halt. Worse still, EVERYTHING will be affected if we get an accident, a couple of inconsiderately parked vehicles or emergency road works. At that stage, NOTHING will move into or out of the town centre. (If the whole scheme isn't ditched by the Joint Transortation Board, I may produce a few traffic flow maps so that we can discuss how the proposed system will alter driving habits all over town and how it will all centre on the carnage of south Oxford Street!!!).

Is it really sensible for an entire traffic scheme to depend on one very congested and unsuitable strip of road?  Surely, a system is only as good as its weakest point. Where major routes share a common section, that section must be both extremely effective and clear. The proposed system makes no provision for this whatsoever. In fact, it doesn't even acknowledge the issue.... despite the fact that it removes all northern access to the town centre and shoves yet more traffic along that southern stretch. 

One possibility is to start discussing new ways of ridding Whitstable of the Oxford Street traffic lights once and for all. (For example, it is already prohibited to turn right into Belmont Road from Canterbury Road. Has the time now come to close the Belmont Road junction altogether or, at least, prevent traffic emerging from it?). Of course, such discussions would need to look in detail at how people access the town centre from different parts of town and it may require road alterations some distance away..