Roads plan? We need action – not words...
Your front page headline of October 6, ‘Bid to cut deaths on roads’, has prompted me yet again to raise the issue of Hazlehead crossroads in the Dunford parish.
The article gives the so-called South Yorkshire Safer Roads Partnership a huge opportunity to inform readers of their raison d’etre.
The statistics speak for themselves and no-one would argue that they are acceptable but there is little explanation as to how the SYSRP are to achieve their ‘Vision Zero’; something not lost on the Chronicle Comment, same issue.
Tom Finnegan-Smith tells us that we all have the power to change things, simply by keeping to traffic laws and regulations.
But that puts the onus on road users, not SYSRP. He goes on to say that SYSRP will continue to develop and invest in their education, engineering and enforcement programmes but what are they?
From my personal experience of dealing with SYSRP, I must confess I am at a loss as to the purpose of this quango.
I contacted SYSRP to ask what their thoughts were on my call on BMBC Highways to reduce the speed limit through Hazlehead crossroads.
Their eventual response was to simply reference BMBC Highways’ response: ‘We did a £400k road safety improvement scheme there, which was completed in summer 2022.
‘As part of that scheme the speed limits were reviewed and discussed with South Yorkshire Police. The review decided that the speed limits are appropriate for the road, which was agreed by SYP. Clearly SYSRP weren’t going to commit to comment.
This response from BMBC highways’ officers, which was the same given to Coun James Higginbottom, wasn’t completely accurate.
Firstly, the £400k they claim to have spent has been inflated eightfold, as when I got the original work programme outline from Coun Chris Lamb, Coun Higginbottom’s predecessor on the cabinet, the figure was £50k. Incidently, the financial cost of reducing the speed limit would be a fraction of this; around £5k when I last researched the costs.
I also noted that officers had said that South Yorkshire Police had agreed with their position on the speed limit.
Their response to Coun Higginbottom also stated that SYP did not support a reduction of the speed limit. This was news to me, so I approached SYP via the Crime and Police and Crime Commissioner’s Office for an official response.
The response I got was that BMBC officers had contacted SYP for consideration of their review of Hazlehead crossroads but ‘no formal comment has been made in respect of any speed limit changes along the A616’, and that ‘any previous comments made in relation to changes in the speed limit do not reflect the formal position of South Yorkshire Police at this time’.
I would remind readers, Coun Higginbottom and Tom Finnegan-Smith that six people have lost their lives at this crossroads in recent years, and there has been one person with life-changing injuries as a result of collisions.
The severity of those collisions would have been less had the vehicle travelling on the A616 been going slower. Does this position reflect Vision Zero?