Neighbourhood Plan - travel and transport thoughts
Archive - Originally posted on "The Horse's Mouth" - 2015-03-29 16:35:54 - Graham Ellis
The future of travel and transport in Melksham - the next 20 years - what may we see? These are things that need to be considered in putting together the neighbourhood plan, the work of which was launched to the public on Friday and Saturday at the Assembly Hall. It's a mammoth job to get people to think ahead about (primarily) land use - and full credit to Richard Wood, Terri Welch and Nick Westbrook for gathering so much data, so many helpers, and getting a response which lead to each of the theme areas being peppered with initial thoughts.
On Travel and Transport, where I was manning a stand for the TransWilts Community Interest Company, I had a good view of the theme board where people were posting notes of ideas, and it was good to see a sea of yellow.
In generallity, I personally ask ...
* Growth of town - and which side of the town, and how far from the town - will modes of transport need to vary (e.g. will there be a loss / gain or walked journeys, cycled journeys, driven journeys, bussed journeys?)
* Where will people want to go - to the town centre, the supermarkets, sports and social clubs, friends, medical centres, employment areas, and where out of town - countryside, neighbouring towns, distant locations?
* At what times will people want to travel? Will there be a peak time of day / week? Will they want to go in groups or singles? What luggage will they be taking? What sharing of resources will the social environment allow?
* How able will people be from a commercial (afford it), medical (fit to do it), legal (aged able to do it), environmental (Carbon, Peak Oil) and practical (congestion / ability to park) to use a mode of transport under their own control?
* How will use of the network be reflected in freight, delivery and service traffic?
and on immediate issues
* Some bus services are on the edge of viability (especially where there's competition on commercial routes, or council subsidy), and the mechanisms for bus regulation in Wiltshire may be excellent for large towns and cities but can lead to some situations which are not ideal for our area. A scantily used bus leads to a reduction in service, which leads to even more scantly use as journey options are removed ("I can't get home any more"). Two buses a few minutes apart followed by an hour's gap and lack of cross ticketing doesn't help. Train to bus connections seem at times to be "pot luck". Services are slower that they were a generation ago as a single bus now runs both the inter-town journey and the village pickups along the way. Would a London-style model of operating contracts for bus routes provide a solution to the current underlying issues which make services limited, slow, expensive and unattractive?
* Rail use [Melksham] has grown over the past year - what happens beyond 2016 (in the last week we have better news here!) - and how does that go beyond the current franchise and beyond the area? For Melksham, we can envisage a train running every hour, and linking services Swindon - Westbury, Westbury - Salisbury and Salisbury - Southampton - Airport. 2 weeks ago you may have said "dream" - but it looks practical to do it, and our ducks are starting to line up. Wider / connections at Chippenham - we're also looking at faster trains to London and hourly local trains from Metro West (Bristol to Bath) serving existing and perhaps new local stations into Wiltshire.
* Traffic is getting heavy at pinch points such as Spa Road / Snowberry Lane to Spa Road / The Spa roundabout which now takes all the directed traffic off East Melksham headed out of town. Is this the right way to send traffic / should there be another route with potentially a further 1000 homes to be built? The bypass is getting clogged (especially with the A36 diversions at present) and potentially more traffic will be driven that way once bottlenecks at Chippenham (happening) and Westbury (back on the cards!) get reduced. Melksham becomes an easier way south than Bath and London Road there!
* Campus access through planning is purely from the Market Place. Will that single access point cope? Does the No Right Turn into Church Street / Central Car Park send too much traffic around the Market Place? What about pedestrianisation of the Town Centre? The Campus has been promised to be open long hours and serve the whole of the Melksham Community Area - what facilities are being provided to allow people to get there in the early morning / evenings / on Sundays if they cannot drive?
* Station Access. Melksham's buses go past the top of station approach in the middle of a long gap between stops. That's not helpful for connecting. And the council owned station land is blocked from the council owned road at Foundry Close by a council owned fence - with a walk of about a km (and two crossings of the A350) to get round. The roundabout in Foundry Close even has a spur on it up to the fence to allow for a connection, and it's part of the scheme that was / is government funded under LSTF, but nothing has happened on the ground and the scheme is expiring. This would provide walk / cycle routes to north Melksham and Melksham Forest, and an additional way out from the Station that does not involve use of the subway which some people find frightening.
