Agenda item

To receive and answer any questions from Surrey County Council electors within the area in accordance with Standing Order 66.

Question from Mrs Molly Ringwood of Stroude Road Residents Association:

a)    What plans are there to introduce traffic calming in Stroude Road?

The chairman gave the following response on behalf of the Local Committee:

Surrey County Council currently has no proposals to introduce traffic calming measures in Stroude Road.

It should also be noted that the County Council has received complaints from residents about noise and vibrations at locations where speed humps have been introduced on roads used by large vehicles.  Introducing such measures in Stroude Road could therefore potentially increase the problems of vibration already being reported by residents especially given that some properties are located relatively close to the edge of the carriageway.

However, the County Council working in partnership with Surrey Police has implemented the following measures to try and lower vehicles speeds which may in turn help reduce the levels of vibration experienced:

·         3 vehicle-activated signs (which display the “30” symbol when activated) have been erected on lamp columns.

·         Surrey County Council and Surrey Police have a partnership called Drive SMART which aims to tackle concerns over speeding and anti-social driving. As part of the initiative local speed management plans have been developed for each District and Borough. These plans identify the sites with the worst speeding problems so they can be targeted for appropriate action.

·         Stroude Road is one of the sites included on the Runnymede Speed Management Plan. As a result, the location is targeted for speed enforcement by Surrey Police.

·         Surrey Police has previously worked with residents to set up a Community Speed Watch Group as part of an initiative to enable volunteers to work within their community to raise awareness of the dangers of speeding and to help control the problem locally.  Unfortunately, this group is no longer active.  However, Surrey Police would be very happy to work with the Residents’ Association to establish a new Community Speed Watch Group.

b)    Are there any plans to discourage parking on the pavement?

The Chairman gave the following response on behalf of the Local Committee:

At this particular location it is difficult to identify measures that would be effective in discouraging drivers from parking on the footway without prohibiting parking completely (which is likely to be unpopular with some residents).  In some circumstances, installing bollards in the footway may be an option.  However, they would not be appropriate or effective in this instance for the following reasons:

·         The parking takes place over a significant length and therefore a large number of bollards would be required.  This would result in substantial costs both in terms of their initial installation as well as ongoing maintenance. 

·         Bollards have to be set back from the kerb edge when they are installed.  They would therefore restrict the available width of footway in a similar manner to the parked vehicles.

·         There are a series of vehicular accesses with dropped kerbs along the length of road where the vehicles park.  Bollards could not be placed across these accesses.

If parked vehicles are preventing pedestrians from passing along the footway then this is an offence.  The concerns raised by the Residents’ Association have therefore been passed to Surrey Police so they can assess whether it is appropriate to take enforcement action.