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Braydon Avenue Traffic Calming Failure

adam802
Mar 19, 2015
2 min read

When any scheme on the road is designed, it is designed for a minimum of 15 years lifespan. Interesting to see South Gloucestershire Council currently ripping out schemes completed less than five years ago throughout Stoke Gifford.

This latest traffic calming scheme is a sensible speed table (a large speed hump). This will keep speeds down along Braydon Avenue, Little Stoke for those who utilise the road.

However, there is a problem. Only five years ago, along Little Stoke Lane and Braydon Avenue a number of expensive road narrowing kerbs were installed to slow traffic down.

Ignore the fact these roads were designed and built as 40mph roads, but have been reduced for no reson to 30mph. Hence the need for a speed reduction scheme (it's called cause a problem, then spend money solving problem caused in first place).

The council was advised through Stoke Gifford Parish Council that this would not slow traffic down, but would cause congestion as it forces vehicles in one direction to stop. This then clogs up the junctions.

Furthermore a lot of vehicles would race through the narrowing at high speed, causing near accidents.

The parish council objected to this scheme, and over the past year Little Stoke Lane has had teh narrows replaced with speed tables.

Now Braydon Avenue in Little Stoke has a table. The main issue is that this orad was shut for a while to traffic, causing disruption. The closure was to change a failed and unwanted system with another system that should have been put in there in teh first place.

The problem now is, that this table isn't marked out as a zebra crossing, which means where pedestrians had a narrow part of the road to cross, they now have twice the distance to get to the other side. Oh South Glos, why do you do these half a**ed schemes? Put a zebra crossing on it.

It's not rocket science.

It's our tax you waste!

Note: Notice the cycle lane. They've been ignored in the present scheme.

(Top - old scheme. Bottom - New scheme)