Huge thanks to the person who shared this photo with us. We are amazed that they managed to take the photo at all as they must have been scared stiff. Difficult to see but that's a taxi turned over in the dark in Upper North Street in 2022. Remember the update we shared with you 3 weeks ago showing the rubbish truck that was tipped on its side last year in the Street.
No injuries as far as we know from these 2 accidents but a couple of years ago a delivery vehicle came too fast around the corner and hit a child on the pedestrian crossing in the Street breaking a bone!
The Council has said they monitor road traffic collisions for the whole city on an ongoing basis. Presumably that means the Council monitors injuries and deaths from those collisions, but it is too late once the collision has happened. A collision can turn the lives of families, and a close knit community, upside down.
So let's all make sure the Council prevents road traffic collisions from these 700 buses on 14 bus routes, and 850 taxis per day for 2 years, by staging and then phasing the Western Road improvements that we all want. For short stages that need traffic management, they can use a person at either end with a cone and a walkie-talkie as they clearly don't like to be called away from other activities to fix temporary traffic lights that have stopped working! The project would take longer, but road traffic collisions would be reduced to 'baseline' levels.
It is such a shame that the Council delayed 'advising' the Montpelier Road and Upper North Street residents of this diversion for well over a year. Pity they ambushed us just before Christmas. Had they engaged with us, and followed their 2020 - 23 Plan and their Council Statement of Community Involvement, this project could have been sorted in a way that the Western Road project could be delivered, bus routes and timetables could be met without the chaos we are about to experience, that is bad for the community (particularly older people, kids and business), and the Council failing to bring the community in to the project, leading to an absolute shambles.