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By Sarah Cliss Senior reporter @ Cambs Times ©
Councillors voiced their concerns at Whittlesey Town Council’s meeting on Thursday when they discussed a Local Highways Initiative bid to have an automatic barrier installed on the town’s High Causeway.
The area is a pedestrianised zone where vehicles are banned between 10am and 4pm, but drivers regularly ignore the signs putting shoppers at risk.
Cllr Dee Laws said: “We have to do something, I have nearly been knocked over, and I know a child was knocked over down there.
“Delivery vans come far too fast down there and someone is going to be seriously hurt or even killed if we don’t do something.”
Mayor Cllr Alex Miscandlon added his wife had also suffered a near miss.The town council has already put in a Local Highways Initiative bid (LHI) to Cambridgeshire County Council to have an automatic barrier installed, with the town council footing 10 per cent of the cost, and the county paying the rest.
However, Cllr Barry Wainwright gave an update on the bid and warned it may be unsuccessful as the county council was not in favour of automatic barriers.
He said an application for a manual barrier was more likely to be successful.
But Cllr Dee Laws said a manual barrier would involve someone having to open and close it at the relevant times, and she said most people were already too busy.
Cllr Chris Boden claimed the county council had given various reasons why they would not support an automatic barrier including that it would go against policy.
However, he said that upon investigation the county did not have any policy relating to automatic barriers and so he was putting pressure on for them to introduce a policy, but accepted it might be too late for the LHI deadline.But agreed action was needed as drivers simply ignoring the pedestrian only signs was not acceptable.
There was a suggestion that ANPR (automatic number plate recognition) cameras could be an alternative solution to a barrier.
Cllr Roy Gerstner said the council had been trying to get something done for the past 10 years and said it would be an “absolute travesty” if it was not sorted now the bid had been made.
It was agreed that Cllr Boden and fellow county council Michael Fisher should put a motion forward to the county council calling for a policy to allow automatic barriers to be considered by Cambridgeshire highways.
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