We the undersigned as residents of Long Readings Lane have had long standing problems with the traffic calming measures and the lack of off-road parking options that are available.
The traffic calming measures were introduced many years ago without consultation and have since caused major problems with the flow of traffic - throughout the day and night. Our ward councillors have been contacted in the past to request that the traffic calming measures be removed. These requests have either been sadly dismissed or just annoyingly ignored. During peak times the traffic often comes to a complete standstill as drivers do not observe the designated give way signs as required to allow the traffic to flow more freely. The traffic can often get backed up to as far back as the Mars factory on the trading estate. The flow of traffic is far more free flowing on Long Furlong Drive as a result of speed humps being in place and therefore the current traffic calming measures on Long Readings Lane should be replaced with those instead.
There is also a distinct lack of off-road parking options available on Long Readings Lane. This means that residents are having to try and park their cars in the very limited number of bays available - leading to cars having to be parked on the kerb wherever possible. A similar situation used to occur on Northborough Road - with cars being parked on the grass verges. However, this all changed towards the end of last year when Slough Council went ahead and provided a budget to allow the grass verges to be converted into more off-road parking. We the undersigned feel that the same changes now need to be made on Long Readings Lane to ensure that the burden on off-road parking is dramatically reduced.
This ePetition ran from 16/10/2020 to 13/11/2020 and has now finished.
58 people signed this ePetition.
Thank you for your correspondence.
With regard to the issues you have raised regarding the existing traffic calming, an engineer visited Long Readings Lane on December 3rd between 8am and 9am, and again between 3pm - 4pm.
Our engineer highlighted that am and pm congestion is evident with school traffic contributing considerably to congestion on the road. This is unfortunately usual outside all schools in the borough. We work with a number of schools to introduce ‘softer’, cost-effective measures to encourage the school community to walk/cycle to school, or park away from the school gate and would be happy to work with the cluster of schools in this area. It is recognised that it is not always costly engineering measures that are required to tackle a particular issue but we would need the schools’ commitment to partner with us for this to be effective. We will make contact with the schools in the new year. I feel that as part of the evidence collecting, we will issue a school-travel survey to understand how many parents drive their children to school. This is important as it will demonstrate whether the issue is the existing traffic calming, or whether it is in fact school-run congestion.
I feel it is important to highlight out that the limited budget for road safety/ traffic calming measures is allocated to address speed and safety issues primarily; using speed/accident data to evidence an intervention. In this particular instance the accident data shows 4 slight accidents over the last 3 years which would mean this area would not ordinarily be prioritised as an area of concern.
However, it was observed that drivers were unwilling to allow others to pass and although not observed, our engineer noted that drivers may speed to pass the traffic calming. We will therefore undertake further analysis to understand driver behaviour which will include commissioning of speed and traffic volume surveys to provide data regarding speeding and congestion. This data will be collected and shared with your Councillors but officers cannot confirm at this stage that action will be taken until funding is allocated to introduce any changes to the existing scheme.
As part of this work, we will look at options for safe crossing points as a full review but the introduction of i.e. a zebra crossing may add to existing congestion issues and is very costly to implement. We have to prioritise our budget for areas where we have evidence of accident and speeding to demonstrate a need to make improvements and I am unable at this time able to advise if any other funding stream is available to address the issues you have raised such as congestion. The existing scheme would have been introduced to address a specific set of issues (speeding in particular) and the measures designed as the most appropriate however we will revisit this as part of our review of the area.
Your concerns regarding lack of parking have also been investigated by our Parking Development team. You have requested for us to consider converting the grass verges into parking areas, however this request can only be considered if it is supported by your ward Councillors as the Council does not have a budget for such requests. You have also asked us to review the garages to see if additional parking can be created here. It is likely that these areas are not public highway, however if you could provide us with an exact location where the garages are located, we can investigate this matter further.
Finally you have asked that we mark the existing parking bays to allow more effective parking and to make the bays resident only. Can you confirm which bays you are referring to? Again once we have this additional information we can advise further.
I look forward to hearing from you soon.