Bumping into the glass door of bureaucracy

This just in... you can't intone the Living Streets ethos if you appear to be living. Quality of life is not a material consideration when it comes to road safety. Having raised a solid example of a local traffic hotspot with local councillors they passed the issue to Transport and Highways. On the eve of their Head of Service meeting with local residents this was the response:

"Dear Councillor Qadar

Thank you for your email of 20 May to John Bann regarding speeding and parking issues on Osborne Road.

As you know, inconsiderate parking and speeding issues are concerns regularly raised by residents in all parts of the City. However, our resources for road safety schemes are limited, and at the moment have to be prioritised for use at locations experiencing a history of injury accidents. According to our records, four slight injury accidents have been reported on Osborne Road in the last five years, two at the junction with St Andrews Road and two at the junction with Union Road . None of these accidents were speed related. Unfortunately there are many other roads in Sheffield experiencing a higher rate of injury accidents, and these have a greater need for road safety schemes. I am therefore afraid I have to tell you that Osborne Road is not on our priority list for any road safety measures at the present time.

I will forward your concerns about parking issues to Parking Services and ask them to enforce the parking restrictions in place on Osborne Road.

I hope this is helpful.

Yours sincerely

Nigel Robson
Road Safety Manager (Acting)"

The Sleeping Policeman says:

No Nigel, it's not helpful. The basic message seems to be 'It's rubbish everywhere, so be glad you're not being run-over and go away?'. So, nothing will be done unless we have more injury accidents. Probably best then not to mention the 15 to 20-plus collisions with parked vehicles in the last six months. Nobody stopped, so only residents' wallets were injured.

If Transport and Highways had bothered to engage with the issues they would know that there are few transgressions of parking restrictions on the exemplar stretch of local road. However, there are too many inconsiderately, if not stupidly, parked cars. That said they slow down some of the more reckless drivers. But on the other hand they obscure pedestrians! Solve one problem, create another!

Public Meeting, 10th June

Great news! John Bann, the Sheffield City Council Head of Transport and Highways will be attending an open meeting on Wednesday 10th June. This is a key opportunity to highlight local transport issues and to press for action on speeding, inconsiderate driving and measures to enhance pedestrian and cyclist well-being. All are very welcome.

The meeting starts at 8pm and will be hosted by the Nether Edge Bowling Club. Please do your best to attend and represent local opinion.

Many thanks go to Nether Edge Neighbourhood Group for setting this meeting up.

RW

What is to be done!

Welcome to a new blog which I hope will provide an initial forum for highlighting traffic problems in and around Nether Edge. Ours is a leafy suburb of Sheffield beloved of rat-runners, boy-racers, imperfect parkers and those in a hurry to get somewhere indeterminate in their metal boxes on wheels.

As the blog evolves we will bring you edited highlights from some of the more idiotic road users. Through guerilla casting on You-Tube and still photos we will evoke something of what we have to endure. Of course we recognise we are not alone in being a community bothered by unchecked growth in vehicular traffic and a lack of planning for pedestrians and cyclists. The difference is we are determined to move from the present imbalance towards a dynamic equilibrium, maybe even a redressed balance. Sheffield City Council may not want their horses to drink at our waterhole, but...