Pointing out total folly of ring road crossing
A FEW years ago the city council wanted to put a pedestrian crossing across five lanes of the inner ring road near the canal bridge that was to be knocked down to make room for a major road scheme. This was total folly, as road users are increasingly caught on mobile phones. There have been several incidents around the country of people being knocked down and killed due to these selfish actions. The crossing was part of an EU-funded £7m road scheme that was also total madness. This would end traffic going around the inner ring road anti-clockwise to go around junction 1 traffic island (start of the A444 Foleshill Road). Instead it would stop where the canal bridge now is to wait at traffic lights in four lanes; the two left lanes would go on, with the two right ones going up Leicester Row (that would become one-way until it reached the Foleshill Road at the top of the slope, where a 90 degree turn would be needed). I, as well as Geoffrey Robinson MP, attended a residents’ meeting to voice his concerns about this folly. At the meeting’s end he made no promise to look into the situation. I handed his secretary at the meeting’s end a proper report with coloured road maps highlighting the total folly of the scheme. I never got a response. At a later council meeting held at Jubilee Crescent, a council planner assured the room that the project would cost nothing as it was EU-funded. I pointed out that we pay tax to Westminster, who then send it to the EU, who then consider funding projects that councils want funding. So people in the room do pay for projects.
I then stated that Coventry City Council would be considered a set of fools nationally by installing a toucan crossing on their main inner ring road, with the likelihood of major traffic snarl-ups, a massive increase in pollution, and the death and/or serious injury to pedestrians.
I gave the planner a copy of my report at the end of the meeting, emailed it to all regional MEPs and sent it to all city councillors. The project was soon dropped. No one ever told me which tactic worked! Paul Hillock Stoke Green