Two petitions calling for a full road-width speed hump to be installed on Didcot Road before the junction with Saxons Heath will be discussed at the next Parish Council meeting on 14th October.
The petitions, which have been circulating in Saxons Heath and Westfield Road, will be presented by one of the main organisers, Donna Harrison, who lives in Saxons Heath.
The Parish Council has responded to the concerns in this letter.
The 20mph will NOT work. I live on this road & not many cars even drive into, our out of, the village at 30mph. Its is always people that do not live in the vicinity that make the stupid decisions. WHY DON’T YOU LISTEN???
Any speed limits are worthless unless they are policed. Personally the idea of a mini roundabout at the end of Saxons Heath seems a good idea although of course traffic coming from Didcot will still have priority. It should slow them down.
The positioning of the current calming measure, which is to be moved, only means that drivers once through it speed out of the village. It seems logical therefore that it should be moved as close to the 30 mile restriction sign as possible to ensure people drive within speed limit.
The Parish Council should look at the Transport Research Laboratory report into traffic calming, especially Latton which lead to a significant reduction in speed. Didn’t need any speed humps, things like vegetation 1.5m high along the road make it feel narrower and reduce traffic speeds.
Vegetation along there would screen some of the noise too, versus a roundabout which would increase traffic noise.
Quick, cheap, green and AFAIK would not need permission from OCC. No need to reinvent the wheel when the research has already been done.
http://www.20splentyforuk.org.uk/UsefulReports/TRLREports/Psychological%20traffic%20calming_TRL_2005.pdf
Let the vegetation grow 1.5 metres high. Where the problem is that would block vision exiting Saxons Heath ,vehicles need to be slowed down and there is a simple solution and hopefully soon common sense will prevail.
You keep it clear across junctions, the idea is to stop someone coming into the village and seeing straight up to the cross – the more road ahead you can see is clear, the faster drivers go.
As I said, it’s been tried by the Transport Research Laboratory (government funded) and found to be effective in real life. I would personally support a road hump but as the PC says I think OCC would object in case some moron hits it at 60mph and crashes into the hedge. Only need to see how often the bollards on the ones by the school are knocked down to see the IQ level/inebriation of some motorists going through the village.
???let the vegetation grow 1.5metres high so blocking vision exiting Saxons Heath !!!where do you live ?The residents of Westfield and Saxons Heath in the majority want a width wide hump ,,problem solved ,,
I would certainly welcome positive measures for speed reduction at either end of the village, and would support the residents of Saxons Heath and Westfield in their petition for built solutions (without enforcement, I do not believe that a 20mph limit would be any more successful than an unenforced 30 mph limit). Both the speed and volume of traffic have increased alarmingly, with now yet another 175 house development at Ladygrove to come.
There has been a lot of discussion of traffic calming, but little of traffic mitigation (that is to say, discouraging traffic from using this road in the first place). In this context, either humps or chicanes (or even both) are positive solutions which discourage traffic through the village, and the chicanes proposed by the Parish Council look good. Discussion with Highways about positive signage eg from Didcot to direct traffic to other, more suitable routes would alsob e welcome, which should be an outcome of the Didcot North East and newly approved Ladygrove extension.
Problem is for the houses being built north of Ladygrove the shortest route towards Oxford will still be through LW, even if the new road past Appleford ever gets built.
Unless they close Clifton Hampden bridge to motor traffic – which would both vastly improve the village and vastly inconvenience villagers – then any benefit will be cancelled out many times over.
The issue is allowing thousands of homes to be built when the most direct route to the nearest city is over a historic, single track bridge. Until that is sorted anything in the village is little more than firefighting.