Evening Telegraph (First Edition)
Ferry street safety fears
RESIDENTS of Broughty Ferry are asking how Brook Street can be made safer after an 81-year-old was knocked down last Wednesday afternoon.
It is thought the woman was injured after a passing car collided with a bench – the severity of her injuries is unknown.
For many, the speed and volume of traffic on the Broughty Ferry main street means there is always an accident waiting to happen.
Four substantial accidents and incidents have been reported on the street since 2020.
In March this year a red Jaguar struck an 87-year-old woman, while in June 2020 a man and a woman were both taken to Ninewells after a car collided with a wall on the street.
Many more minor incidents are likely to have happened without receiving official attention.
Broughty Ferry woman Dee Dee Burns is one of several local people suggesting council officials should look at turning Brook Street into a pedestrian zone.
“That would be a great idea. For a start, anyway,” she said.
Many in the area would support the approach, she added, although there could be issues accommodating drivers with blue badges.
Other ideas mentioned include dropping the speed limit from 20mph to 10mph, introducing more pedestrian crossings and even banning buses from using the thoroughfare.
Cars circling the area waiting for a parking space to become available often compound the congestion problems.
Some have suggested building extra parking spaces in other parts of the Ferry in a bid to ease the problem and more cycling and walking could also take some of the cars off the road.
Graeme Fraser is a retired head of transport at Perth and Kinross Council Public Transport Planning Unit. He lives in Dundee’s West End but travels to the Ferry regularly, mainly by bus.
“Public transport should be part of the answer,” he said. “The other part should be people parking a little further away and walking to get to the shops.”
He suggested more of the short term parking places in Brook Street could be reserved for disabled parking.
“In the longer term, however, we will all need to change our travel habits, but that will be a huge battle for heart and minds.”
Broughty Ferry councillor Craig Duncan said he had contacted the council with his concerns over the street earlier this year and officials had promised to monitor the situation. He is in favour of one, perhaps more, new pedestrian crossings.
He said: “Although traffic is not supposed to be going very fast, it does have the feel of a pedestrianised area. Which it’s not.
“There are people, including the elderly, who don’t really treat the area with the caution that it deserves. Therefore a crossing would delineate where somebody is moving across the roads and provide some needed clarity.”
He said he could also foresee problems with full pedestrianisation, as such an approach would displace traffic into other parts of Broughty Ferry.