Joined up roads

I spent the afternoon earlier looking around some of the new developments in the ward (Pages Priory, Persimmon Court and so on). The houses looked nice enough, and there are bits of open space in the images which again is nice but I still think we have missed something major with the roads.

I am not speaking about buses, trams, cycle routes but the way the roads do not join up. I have had this argument before with planning people and I convinced they are still missing the major problem.

Firstly you are creating "estates" and bringing with that all the problems you can expect. I understand people don't want to live on a rat run but with all these dead ends you create places where trouble can congregate and areas of an estate you cannot get to if there is a blockage in the road such as a car accident or flooding. If there is no through traffic, there is nothing to bring people in to the area which leads to areas that can be deserted and allows trouble to go un noticed.

Secondly, you have congestion at the end of the estate. Remember, there is only one way out. If there is traffic on the main road cars can quickly build up waiting to exit and if there is a queue of traffic (just look at Grovebury Road/Billington Road junction between 4pm and 6pm) do you think an ambulance or fire engine etc could get through around the parked cars? Probably not.

Thirdly, assuming the traffic can get out, we are going to have hundreds of cars coming on to already congested roads to drive round in one big circle to come in to another estate just 5 (tempted to say yards) metres behind where they left off.

Sandhills to Billington park - Billington Road, up to the Morrison's junction (busy enough) having gone past Grovebury Road and then all the way down Stanbridge Road, past the school crossings, over the mini roundabouts, give way as you try to pass the parked cars.... I am sure we could have made it an easier route for cars and bikes.

What is wrong with creating (main) roads that go somewhere? We are already tarmacing most the countryside to build the developments so how about a road through Pages Priory in to Sandhills and on to Billington Park? It creates a whole new way through and does not force cars through the town or miles out around the bypass.

If the road is made wide enough and safe enough, drivers will find the appropriate route. No driver wants to make 8 tight turns around play areas and kids crossing to get through but if we don't give them the roads going where they need them to then what else can you expect???

It is sometimes mistakenly blamed on the police. The accusation is the police like the cul-de-sacs (Wikipedia has it listed as literally meaning arse of a bag) as criminals don't have a through route. Well I have watched those Channel 5 programmes and all the scumbags have to do is jump over a fence to get away leaving the police stuck in theire car unable to get through!

My understanding is that the police don't like all the little alleyways, not that they don't like through roads and quite possibly for the reasons I have listed.

10 years from now we will be able to draw nice little circles on the map around each estate like parasites hanging off a tree trunk. If we have a bad estate, don't worry, just forget the road exists, no one will ever go down it again. But do we really want that attitude? Should we not be joining up all of our streets and taking responsibility for them all?

We need a network of roads in this town to enable traffic to flow. If anyone has been to Reading you will know how bad the "Inner Distribution Road" (A329) is as it forces the entire town's traffic to come on to this road which circles the town centre to send the cars back out again after a 20 minute congested wait!

Please developers, wake up and give us joined up roads and joined up thinking.

Section 106 Requests

In between all the jokes I now get about road signs being spelt correctly, and anything else for that matter (I have become the spelling police) I went to a special planning sub committee meeting to look at the draft Section 106 agreements for three of the large sites to be developed as part of the Southern Leighton Buzzard Development.

For those that don't know, section 106 (planning gain) is the section of planning acts that allow the council (SBDC) to request money from developers to pay for the town's much needed infrastructure.

The drafts we saw suggested that all the developments in the south would contribute 2.5 million pounds towards transport. We worked out we would need more like £25 million. For education the figure was something like £8 million which we thought was about a third of what was actually needed. We are even asking for just short of half a million for public art :)

So our revised version is asking for a huge amount more but we feel this more realistically represent the amount of money infrastructure costs to sustain a development that developers are so keen to stick anywhere.

We have asked for some changes too to the timing of the handover of community facilities. Generally developers like to wait until around 75% of the development is occupied before even starting work on some community facilities. We have requested they build them once the first house is built in some cases so we don’t have a repeat of Billington Park and Sandhills issues where we are still waiting for some of the facilities.

My request is in too, asking developers to ensure we have adequate cycle routes between the developments, to the town centre, and on to the station. So you might not be able to drive through town but at least you can cycle!

It’s a shame we could not at this stage request that developments are built with solar panels, water recycling and so on but that will come when they detailed planning applications are put in (I hope).

Better news for the railway

Mervyn Leah, Chairman of Leighton Buzzard Railway posted this message on a posting further down in the blog which you may not get to see so here it is "Front Page".

In the months since this posting, a lot of progress has been made with the planning issues that had been holding us back. In particular, the District Council has awarded us some "planning gain" funds, as a first instalment on the new building at Page's Park, which will double up as station and community facilities. We do, however, have to find a lot more money, from Lottery and similar sources, before work can start. This will require us to show that we have consulted the local community, and that there is a demand for the facilities. So how about it, good people of Sandhills and Kingswood Park? Post your thoughts here, or email them to info@buzzrail.co.uk.

MERVYN LEAH
Chairman
Leighton Buzzard Railway

One year on

It is exactly one year since I was elected to the Town Council. Now 365 days later on I would like to thank you all again for voting for me and hope that my record in the last year has been as good as you all hoped for.

We have about 7 more months to go until the elections come again and already the banter in the paper has been started by certain councillors trying to shift the blame for the housing once more!

Don't forget, if you have any council related problems, give me a shout.

Schools and Democracy

SBDC Press Release -

Pupils from Cedars Upper School got the chance to find out more about local democracy last Wednesday (5 October), when they attended a ‘citizenship show with a difference’ as part of Local Democracy Week 2006.

Nearly 50 pupils aged between 13 and 17 saw the drama called Who Runs This Place? which was performed at Cedars Upper School by the Solent People’s Theatre Company. Two short plays and an interactive workshop entertained and informed students about how the processes of democracy work at local, national and European levels and why politics are central to all our lives.

The event was organised by South Bedfordshire District Council’s Democratic Services Team. Scrutiny Manager, Rob Mills said: “We really wanted to engage young people and get them interested in politics. Many of the students are coming up to voting age and it is important to promote democracy. The performance was interactive and extremely entertaining, everyone had a lot of fun.”

Adoption of roads

One of the more common complaints we get in this ward is from the many residents living on new estates waiting years for roads to be adopted.

I am getting my head around the procedures and have been working with Billington Park Resident's Association to get the estate's roads adopted.

Billington Park's sewers were adopted by Anglian Water about a month ago and now with a little bit of persuasion, the officers at Beds CC are working through the final plans and we hope to have them adopted by Early 2007.

I will be at the BPRA meeting on Monday and will update the committee and members.