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Minutes:
Mr P Bisatt spoke on agenda item 8, East Street and St James Street, Taunton:-
1. Why was it proposed to exclude buses from East Street, and force them to use a much longer and at times, heavily congested route via The Crescent and Upper High Street? This seemed completely at odds with the wider aim of encouraging the use of public transport on environmental grounds. Town centre improvements should result in improved conditions for buses, not make them worse. The Report did not address this issue at all.
2. How would the permanent loss of 3 bus stops on The Parade, and 2 stops in East Street, be addressed? Where would they be replaced, and what would be the knock-on effects for the streets in which they had to be located?
3. Why was it proposed to allow general traffic to use East Street one-way during peak periods? This would require cyclists to use a contraflow lane in an unpleasant situation, where there would potentially be heavy vehicles travelling in the opposite direction, and cause East Street to be visually dominated by road markings and other traffic management paraphernalia. It would also prevent or restrict a future redesign of The Parade befitting its historic role as the town's market place, rather than a traffic roundabout.
4. Why was no action apparently being taken to close North Street and Corporation Street to general traffic, even though £20m of taxpayers money was spent 10 years ago on the 'Third Way' to enable traffic to avoid these streets?
5. What was the wider strategy for the future management of traffic in North Street, Bridge Street, Corporation Street, Hammet Street and others within the town centre? Should not the proposals for East Street be considered as part of such a wider strategy with appropriate public consultation, as was the case with the 2008 Town Centre Area Action Plan?
6. Why was the council proposing to permanently exclude buses from East Street when this would be contrary to Policy Tr9 of its adopted Town Centre Area Action Plan?
Yours faithfully, Philip Bisatt, MRTPI (Rtd), CMILT
The Portfolio Holder for Planning and Transportation responded:-
1. The closure of East St was a temporary scheme that was initially introduced to allow social distancing as non-essential retail was allowed to reopen in July 2020 following the first national lockdown. This continued throughout the year as social distancing continued and into the busy Christmas period. Once this was over, we entered another lockdown we took the decision to retain the current scheme to enable social distancing essential shopping and click and collect queues.
As we carried out work on a more permanent design for East Street, we continued to engage with SCC to work on further projects that would help to alleviate traffic congestion around the town centre which included how and where the buses operated. Traffic modelling to assess the impact of any permanent scheme for East Street would be undertaken by SCC. However, the design and implementation of such changes were subject to lengthy road safety audit processes and complex design issues, hence we had chosen to extend this temporary scheme throughout the current lockdown whilst our longer term plans were finalised.
These would also be subject to consultation to allow business, community groups, and transport provider’s further opportunity to comment.
2. We were not proposing to remove any bus stops on either East Street or The Parade permanently. The current recommendations for the Executive Committee relating to East Street were:
‘Officers continued to work with Somerset County Council’s Highways team on proposed modifications to vehicular access on East Street in Taunton to increase active travel and enable social distancing. Specifically, instructing them to:
1) Limit vehicular access and restrict traffic movement to one direction only (from the Fore Street junction, exiting onto East Reach/Silver Street)
2) Creating cycle lanes in both directions and offering additionalcycle parking
3) Create additional Blue Badge parking on Magdalene Street, Billet Street and the Crescent Car Park’
This was a temporary scheme while the longer term detailed design was underway, including a consultation with bus service providers via SCC.
3. There was no current proposal to allow general traffic to use East Street. As a response to consultation feedback, SWT did consider trialling access through East during peak hours, however in consultation with SCC’s road safety team it was not possible to find a safe solution to transition from closed to open or vice versa, particularly in winter months.
With the intention of minimising vehicles on a busy shopping street whilst trying to enable social distancing, it was decided to remove the afternoon slot for general traffic but keep the morning one for Blue Badge holders and deliveries only. This was the temporary scheme which remained in place while we worked on the detailed design of the longer term scheme.
4. Further full or partial pedestrianisation was possible in the future, but as infrastructure changes on this scale took time to both design, implement and appraise, the closure of further roads without adequate consideration, and the appropriate consultation.
5. With the Future High Streets Fund being awarded to SWT in December 2020, along with Garden Town and the Taunton 2040 Vision, East Street would certainly fit in a wider strategy for transport in Taunton. We were therefore currently seeking to only extend this temporary scheme whilst this strategy was further developed. This would consider traffic patterns using pre-lockdown data, but we were cognisant that working patterns may change as working from home and online shopping had become more prevalent, so any strategy would need to consider the “new normal”.