Chris and Ron met today with an officer from County Highways and had a walk around with him in Downhall Park Way. This is what we have to report:
The junction with Rawreth Lane (where an accident took place recently). County Highways have confirmed that the lighting here is substandard and an extra lamp-post will be installed. It will be placed on the corner of Downhall Park Way and the Rayleigh side of Rawreth Lane. This is good news!
County Highways are also considering having a pedestrian crossing here and think that funds may be available, left over from sums obtained from developers along Rawreth Lane. We will keep you advised when we know more.
We also asked about having yellow lines here for just a few yards down Downhall Park Way, just keep the junction clear of parked cars. However County Highways aren’t convinced yet that this is needed. Any photos from residents showing cars parked inconveniently here would be very useful – please send them to us – and no, we don’t want pictures of your car parked there.
The “bend” roughly from Salisbury Close to Bristol Close. We spent some time looking at this stretch of the road, and County Highways aren’t convinced yet that there is any problem with parked vehicles here. Once again, we will need photographic evidence – if you can assist, please contact Chris or Ron.
I have some photos taken early on a Sunday morning a few weeks ago when there were almost 16 parked cars on that small stretch near the park entrance.
They are on my phone – will have to find out how to go about downloading them.
Thanks…
Before everyone forms a posse to hunt down the parkers you need to think of one thing, at the moment the parked cars are stopping a lot of the speeding that occured before. If you remove the cars the halfwits that live on the estate will be able to resume speeding. Given that Rayleigh Police have not been able / can’t be bothered to stop this in the past then we are between a rock and hard place…
While I agree that speeding can be problematic, it is often limited to a minority of people on an occasional basis. However, poor parking is often overlooked as a road safety issue, and continues to be a problem until the offending cars are moved.
If you then get poor parking AND speeding, then you get the worst possible situation. Encouraging one problem to hopefully reduce another is not very good road safety policy.
I’m glad to see that the headmaster of Downhall School has kept to his word, and recently “named and shamed” a school run parent for poor parking/driving, by publishing the offender’s number plate in the weekly news letter.
Yesterday there were eighteen or more cars parked on the offending stretch of road and a massive amount of double parking just before Salisbury Close too.
In fact, it was impossible to pull out of Salisbury Close with any visibility at all – so I took my life in my hands and edged out very slowly.
I was about to take a photo(from the pavement I hasten to add) when along came a police car – he took one look at the situation and did a reverse around the corner and roared off!!
I have this on film too.
…………… incidentally can I add that having negotiated the corner in question twice tonight in thick fog I was interested to note that all of the offending cars that usually park opposiite the park entrance seem to have mysteriously found their way up onto their respective driveways!!
Ohhh would not want the poor little cars to get hit in the fog now would we? BUT it is fine for other drivers and pedestrians to take their lives into their hands every day when we have to tackle blind corners because of their owners poor parking!!!
Rant over!
ST1 – you are incorrect when you state that it is a minority of people on an occasional basis, it is approx 12-15 morons who speed 100% of the time, they are the people that should be targetted by the police.
RR – Sorry, when I used the term “on an occasional basis”, I meant that it is only an issue when one of the speeding offenders is travelling along the road, whereas a badly parked car will be creating a hazard for other road users for extended periods of time.
I should have substituted “transient” for “occasional”.