£1.4m safety schemes for Norwich streets

City councillor Brian Morrey.

SHAUN LOWTHORPE

27 November 2009

A £1.4m package of safety measures for Norwich's streets were agreed yesterday including new crossings, cycle schemes, traffic calming, and bus improvements.

Members of the Norwich Highways Agency committee approved the schemes including:

£230,000 for traffic calming

£215,000 for road crossings

£190,000 for cycling schemes

£150,000 for local safety schemes

£125,000 for bus infrastructure

£125,000 for walking schemes

Brian Morrey, committee vice-chairman and executive member for sustainable city development, said residents would feel the benefits of the improvements.

He said the top priority would be an upgrade to the junction of St Clements Hill and Wall Road, where he said accidents were almost a daily event.

“We have put forward a good package to the county council to help benefit the city,” he said. “There's all sorts of different schemes and we've tried to cover as much as we can.”

Green councillor Rupert Read, said overall the schemes were pretty impressive and he was particularly pleased to see that the council was looking at allowing cyclists to ride in the opposite direction along one-way streets in line with a relaxation of the rules from the department for transport.

But there was anger from residents of one city street that the no money was to be found for traffic calming.

Householders in Mount Pleasant have long called for improvements in the area to cut speeding and cars mounting on the curb.

Henry Sutton, 46, told the meeting that Norfolk County Council's own figures showed that 6,500 cars a week broke the speed limit along the road.

He said problems were caused by cars bumping up the narrow pavements and also extra traffic during the school run, while police were also concerned.

“The police don't understand why the road isn't a 20mph zone already,” Mr Sutton said. “It's not acceptable for the council to sit back and do nothing while thousands every year not only break the speed limit but endanger the lives of school children, elderly people living in the area, and not to mention residents.”

Lib Dem councillor Mervyn Scutter, said he was concerned about the speeding figures produced and asked if the committee could look again at the issue.

Labour's Bert Bremner said many of the problems were linked to the neighbouring schools and could be tackled as part of a wider solution including encouraging parents to use park-and-ride when instead of dropping pupils off at the school gates.

But committee chairman Tony Adams said it was not in a position to act because residents in neighbouring streets disagreed with Mount Pleasant residents about the best option to tackle the problem - including a proposed one-way loop.

“We can't keep coming back to it,” he said. “We looked at a few months ago and the voting members came to the view that because the views of residents weren't reconciled we just couldn't do anything about it.”