Day 1 of the Clean Air Zone
The new signage was unveiled last night, ready for the morning peak traffic. Three of us from the CRA were there to see the early morning response from drivers and we were met later by Cllr Richard Samuel.
Residents of Belgrave Crescent had been concerned that people rebounding from the zone would turn back along their road. As Rachel can attest to, we mercifully saw none of that at all, but we’ll keep a watching brief.
The Centurion coaches serving St Mark’s School were running as usual along Camden Road. Hopefully they were euro6 compliant because the daily cost of using the CAZ for a non-compliant large vehicle is £90.
We said hello to many residents on foot and several families making their way up Gay’s Hill, to cross Camden Road, and continue uphill to St Stephen’s School. Hopefully the pavement on Gays Hill and crossing Camden Road will be safer if we get a Liveable Neighbourhood.
There was also quite a lot of traffic probably coming from the north west and using the SW part of Camden Road and dropping down Gays Hill presumably to use:
- Walcot Street to cross the city before the Waitrose busgate starts at 10am
- Cleveland Bridge to go south, east and west
- Pera Road to join London Road after the Cleveland Bridge traffic lights.
All these are cut throughs, along residential streets, to avoid possible delays on the designated arterial roads – all things we want to tackle in our Liveable Neighbourhood bid.
Jeremy, the author of this post, had a chance to chat to Cllr Samuel.
I pressed our disappointment about the delay on the decision over the liveable neighbourhood bidding process, reported here last week, and our concerns over the temporary closure of Cleveland Bridge. The delay will still stand primarily because the prospect of a programme of liveable neighbourhoods is proving quite controversial and the safest and soundest path needs to be steered through this.
As for the certain displacement caused by the closure of Cleveland Bridge, a ‘suck it and see’ approach is being taken. If it proves as bad as we fear then emergency measures will be put in place. I said the Council should be planning for the worst and hoping for the best – not the other way round. Our councillors and the CRA will keep pressing for a far better approach.
Do leave a comment if you have a strong opinion on this as well as making sure you sign up to our campaign here.
There is so much more traffic on Camden Road today, which is a bit odd. Are the council monitoring traffic increases/decreases?
Hi Rachel,
I find it really difficult to tell, from day to day, week to week. There’s no obvious reason for a big change up other than people hearing that London Road has a boundary point and perhaps thinking that the NE Bath cut through avoids it. Were that to be the case then it’ll settle down back to normal.