This announcement appeared in the Warrington Guardian on the 31st December and time is running out for residents to make their views heard.
It has come to my attention that some householders on Booth’s Hill Road and in Highfield Road were not individually mailed a copy of this proposal. If you have any views, for or against the proposal, it is vital that you write to the Borough Solicitor, Tim Date, as instructed on the notice.
Please bear in mind that only traffic issues or issues of due process are relevant. So if you know of accidents or near misses that would have been avoided with this measure, or you feel you have not been adequately informed about why the measure is proposed or what alternatives have been investigated these are all valid reasons to write in.
Do not bring in other matters such as the potential impact on the price of your property which are not valid Traffic reasons for supporting ot objecting to this proposal.
If you don’t want to write, just fill in the survey on the left and we will tell the Council what you think.
In addition to the problem caused by residents parking on Booths Hill Road. There is a further problem where residents park their cars on the pavement on Booths Hill Road (both sides of Highfield Road) which also causes a serious obstruction to vision when pulling out of Highfield Road.
We have had several near misses over the years when pulling out of Highfield Road. We contacted Cllr. Woodyatt about this situation a long time ago, but did not receive a satisfactory answer. Apparently the council officer who was handling the issue had left and nothing could be done until his replacement was found. Totally unacceptable!!
Although we do sympathise with the people who live on this stretch of Booth’s Hill road that will be directly affected by the addition of the double yellow lines, as residents of Highfield road, my wife and I are in favour of this proposal as we both have had near misses trying to turn out of our road due to the fact that you can not see past the cars that park there. A young neighbour even had his car written off after an accident he was involved in here. Often the local residents and local business vehicles park on the pavement there in an effort, I believe, to try to help the situation, put to be perfectly honest this actually makes it worse.
We would also like it to be noted that we had not been notified of this proposal, and would have been none the wiser that we could have had an input had we not received the flier from Bob Barr.
I completely support the need for double yellow lines as proposed. Although I do sympathise with those people who live at the junction, cars should not be parked there if they obscure the view for motorists trying to turn onto a main road. I have witnessed 2 accidents at this junction myself and believe that is only a matter of time before someone is seriously injured or even killed. With the exit from Hardy Road onto Cherry Lane being nearly as difficult to turn out of safely if these measures can be carried out it will at least give us one safe exit route from Highfield/Hardy Road area.
I object to the proposals because:
1.The ban is a sticking plaster type solution that ignores the fact that the root cause of the difficulties associated with exiting from Highfield Road lies in the fact that the traffic on the A56 does not keep to the speed limit.
2.The removal of parked vehicles makes the road appear wider and this is known to make drivers feel that it is safe to increase speed. Therefore the proposal could make exiting Highfield Road more difficult at times.
3.Removal of parked vehicles will give a clear acceleration lane up to the 60 mph speed limit a short distance to the West. This limit should be reduced to 40 mph. The recent speed limit review (Phase A) did not take this problem into account.
4.Residents exiting from driveways on the inside of bends along the Higher Lane section of the A56 face worse problems than exiting from Highfield Road because of excess approach speeds. I ask the Transport Department to devise a speed control solution for problems that residents in many different areas of Lymm experience rather than devising ad hoc solutions that do not go to the heart of the problem.
Traffic calming measures are required along the whole section of the A56, particularly where the road narrows, ie from Rectory Road junction to Jolly Thresher Juction. Residents new to Lymm are attracted by the beauty of the village and it’s community – allowing fast and large vehicles to drive along this road, regardless of the blind spots & bends, is a recipe for increased accidents as well as increased costs for council repair works to road & path surfaces.
I live on Highfield Road and experience high speeds of traffic when trying to turn onto Booth’s Hill Road due to the fact that the speed limit has just changed from national speed limit to 30mph and many people ignoring this change, but also the fact that it is difficult to see past the parked cars. I feel that double yellow lines will make people speed more on Booth’s Hill Road as there will not be any cars parked for them to have to avoid hitting. We need a different method of traffic calming. Cars quite often use Highfield Road as a short cut up to Cherry Lane and onto the M6, I assume, and drivers sometimes speed up our road. Also when I have been trying to park on my drive after coming home from work I am sometimes faced with a driver waiting behind me looking rather aggravated who then speeds off up the road as if I have very much inconvenienced them. We were not informed of the proposal until we had a letter through our door from Bob Barr, notification of the plans in the newspaper for the nearby town is not acceptable.
Anything which will improve the visibilty for drivers leaving Highfield Road has to be welcomed.When turning right onto Booths Hill Road it is often neccesary,in order to gain a clear veiw,to drive at least one cars length onto Booths Hill Road.I do wonder, however, what will be done about vehicles which park on the pavement and therefore contribute significantly to the problem?Speed may well be a factor in this issue ,but then traffic speed causes problems to residents in a number of locations in the village.What a pity that the energy being utilised on the A56 issue is so narrowly focussed,when Lymm as a community has many traffic issues.
David Roberts is right, there are traffic issues elsewhere in Lymm.
The A56 is the focus of interest at the moment because there is a national speed limit review which has cast attention to the A56, the Highfield Road issue has come to a decision point and the Higher Lane campaign has been active. Recently Mill Lane had changes in speed limits in response to local concerns.
There are still concerns about Rush Green Road, though the 40 mph limits in Trafford make that slightly less of a problem. Cherry Lane is still a serious cause for concern all the way from the M6/M56 roundabout. There is also a head of steam building up behind making residential roads 20mph zones in the village.