Langholm - An example of how British villages are blighted by traffic
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Langholm - An example of how British villages are blighted by traffic
(12 posts)-
Posted 12 years ago #
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I saw this earlier and posted a comment (it's not there yet, so presume Dave has the option to vet comments before they are posted).
The gist of it was that Langholm's geography would make a by-pass particularly challenging and (to my mind, at least, quite ugly): the town (Langholmites won't thank you for calling the Muckle Toon a village) is at the confluence of a narrow valley with steep hills on either side.
20mph limits and some sensitive street design would be a good start and, frankly, the trunk road status of the A7 should not make any difference at all to the speed limit. A 10mph reduction in the limit through the town would have minimal impact on journey times.
Does anyone really think it's acceptable for HGVs to do 30mph through town centres like this? If so, they should stand on that metre-wide pavement in Langholm and see how it feels...
Posted 12 years ago # -
That looks completely horrible. That pavement is so narrow. A real testament to "Traffic Flow Conquers All" mentality.
Posted 12 years ago # -
I've had a bit of communication with the Langholm 20s Plenty group - they calculate that it would add about 7 seconds to the journey through the town...
Posted 12 years ago # -
7 seconds? Are they sure about that? That doesn't get you very far at 10mph. How long is the proposed 20 zone?
I wonder how much a tunnel would cost as way of a bypass. Presumably tunnelling is quite expensive, or maybe it would be totally impractical for any number of reasons. But, to me, if cost were not an issue it would be an ideal solution.
Posted 12 years ago # -
sorry, was posting from memory. It's 24 seconds
"Just 0.4 miles of the A7 passes through Langholm, and currently it has a 30mph speed limit for that stretch. It currently takes a driver 48 seconds to cover that distance – as against 72 seconds if the speed limit was dropped."
http://cyclingdumfries.wordpress.com/2011/12/20/20s-plenty-for-langholm/
Posted 12 years ago # -
Worse than Langholm are the raised pavements in Lauder. I nearly got my head panned in by the near-side mirror on a bus.
Posted 12 years ago # -
For Langholm you could read ay Scottish (or British) market tow.
I assume that the bollards on the narrowest sections of pavements are to stop people driving onto the pavement to make tight squeeze passes. Even though they end up denying access to pushchairs, wheelchairs or people with pull-along shopping trolleys (do such things still exist?) without stepping onto the road.
20mph might be safer, but it wouldn't make the ambiance of the town centre any more pleasant for wandering around or sitting out at a cafe, letting children roam free etc. as you still have a large number of noisy, heavy and still fast (in cycling / walking terms) moving traffic endlessly rumbling through.
I don't think the comparison to the Netherlands is entirely fair - as PS points out, Langholm (and many other Scottish villages / towns) are constrained by geography into having only one route through them and by history into that route being a narrow one through the centre. It's rarely cheap or easy to simply divert a main road around them, and doing so normally ends up eating into green land. However even when we do bypass our towns (e.g. Haddington and Dunbar with the A1) with major routes, they still seem to end up chock full of cars and not entirely pleasant places to wander of an afternoon.
Posted 12 years ago # -
yes, you have to be careful to combine any bypass building with simultaneous measures to cut traffic within the bypassed area (while also making it possible for the bypass traffic to get to the town if it wants to).
I suppose the long term ideal solution would be more freight on rail and less traffic generally
Posted 12 years ago # -
I have a pull along shopping trolley, but it's quite narrow, and not affected by bollards.
Posted 12 years ago # -
You could not (legally) get through Langholm at an average speed of 30mph, so I doubt the cost in time would even be as large as the distance x speed limit differential.
I would agree that those big HGVs passing through the town are not pleasant - it is a small town on a 19th century scale, which puts peds in very close proximity with the traffic. A lot of the HGV traffic is from forestry/logging, so it may be a temporary issue as they clear an area of mono-forest?
Why stop at 20mph? There must be an argument for 15mph or even 10mph through the Market Place where it goes down to one lane.
Posted 12 years ago # -
If no bypass is possible, how about nominating one hour of the day during which it's legal for HGVs to drive through the town, provided they don't exceed 10mph. If they arrive after that hour they have to wait outside town until the next day.
Imagine them going through in convoy. It'd be quite a sight. A new tourist attraction for Langholm!
Posted 12 years ago #
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