Responses to Letter: Traffic Congestion is a Symptom of Growth

1. Bibhas Neogi Reply

   September 4, 2016 at 7:41 pm

   Growth becomes a problem if it is uncontrolled. However, growth is inevitable and we have got to this stage of our civilisation through enormous growth in our knowledge base and in the physical sphere.

   Traffic has grown with the increased prosperity and would continue to grow unless other means of travelling or indeed the need to travel is reduced through increased use of the Internet. The road network needs to expand as we have seen during the last 50 years of building motorways and bypasses. But there is a balance that is to be aimed at not favouring one group of road users at the expense of others.

   In order to pedestrianise town centres, a very good thing indeed, the road network should be rearranged and redesigned with new infrastructure that allows that this to happen. It is not a solution if simply the roads to the town centre are made so congested by denying them access to the town centre as the councils are proposing for Guildford in the options they have put forward to date.

   Oxford, for example, has a number of Park and Ride sites located around it and very good bus services running every ten minutes during peak periods to the town centre. In contrast in Guildford, Onslow Park and
   Ride is under used. Why? Because the access to it is tortuous and time consuming.

   Access to this site should be directly from the A3 and the A31 for it to be fully used and buses should also have better access to the town centre. ‘Bus Gates’ are useful if buses could get to those points without getting bogged down in traffic jams.

   So, my plea to the councils is that please carry out the following:

   1. do the alterations necessary in the shorter term to ease flow through the gyratory;

   2. do not close Walnut Tree Close (WTC);

   3. create the route to the railway station by taking land beside Jewson’s Yard to connect Station View and create a one-way loop with WTC for the narrow stretch of it;

   4. make Debenhams pedestrian crossing a two-stage crossing and the nearby crossing in High Street to act in tandem;

   5. make Park Street two-way with one lane southbound for cars only;

   6. similarly make Friary Bridge two-way with one lane eastbound and then turning right into Millbrook.

   For the longer term my plea is for the councils to explore these:

   1. put the A281 in a tunnel like structure from near Quarry Street junction to close to York Road roundabout:

   2. build a two-lane railway crossing at the northern edge of the network rail land (of course agreement and a flying easement will be required);

   3. extend it on a flyover to Mary Road over WTC and the river;

   4. build a new river bridge to connect WTC with Leas Road or Mary Road;

   5 create a one-way connection from Woodbridge Road to Mary Road by the Police Station;

   6. make Leas Road one-way to Woodbridge Road.

   And finally consider:

   1. relocating the bus station to the Mary Road car park site;

   2. split bus routes to connect the town centre and the railway station;

   3. build a satellite hub adjacent to the Friary Extension along Woodbridge Road/Leapale Road junction.

   My website explains all these and there are new sketches to show the possible tunnel like structure for the A281 and other alterations. The website could be found by searching for “revamp Guildford gyratory”.
   • John Perkins Reply

     September 5, 2016 at 1:22 pm

     I disagree that growth becomes a problem if it’s uncontrolled. It becomes a problem if it’s unlimited. Although of course it will inevitably be limited by the resources it consumes. With a finite resource any growth rate above zero will eventually exhaust it.

     I also disagree that growth is inevitable. Why should it be? It may well be that we have got where we are today through enormous growth, but we should not attempt to define the future by the past.
2. Bibhas Neogi Reply

   September 6, 2016 at 6:18 am

   The future is not defined by the past but future growth is predicted using statistics based on past data, trends and rate of economic growth etc.

   Anyway, having raised the issue of congestion, I wonder if there are any comments about the possible solutions suggested?