East Kent Access Road
By Marijke Cox, Reporter
Sunday, June 3, 2012
10:05 AM
Drivers report long delays caused by new traffic lights and road system
Hellish traffic jams, huge delays and frustrated motorists – so is the new East Kent Access Road worth the £86m it cost to build?
Long-suffering drivers who for years have faced congestion coming in and out of Thanet had hoped problems would be over once the new road network – expected to help boost the east Kent economy by improving access – was completed.
But little more than an hour after it was fully opened by transport minister Norman Baker last week, drivers were bumper to bumper, stuck for long-periods in the sweltering heat as motorists attempted to navigate their way around the new network.
And despite hopes it was simply teething problems, the congestion has continued, with drivers reporting long delays over the past week.
It is being blamed on the introduction of traffic lights at the Lord of the Manor roundabout, which control traffic from the new road which is linked to another part of the access road near the old Richborough power station site.
The junction coming from the old Cliffsend road, however, has no signals meaning drivers have to try and dart out and cut into traffic controlled by the new lights.
In addition, more lanes have been added, but these cut down into single file, resulting in a bottleneck.
A Kent County Council spokeswoman blamed the problems on traffic continuing to use the old road by the Viking ship in Cliffsend instead of the new one running parallel.
“It is intended that the majority of traffic will use the new road,” she said.
“As drivers become accustomed to the new layout and change their route, it is expected that the junction will begin to operate as planned.
“The timings of the traffic light signals are based on predicted traffic flows and as traffic settles down to a regular pattern they will be adjusted.
“We will continue to monitor the flows and any queues over the coming days with a view to making any adjustments in the next few weeks.”
Drivers have reported queues stretching past the Viking ship, and what should be five minute journeys taking as long as half an hour.
One frustrated driver Samantha Smith, who uses the road system every day to get to and from work, called it a “nightmare”.
“Normally I would get to the roundabout and there would be three or four cars in front of me – last week I had a 20 minute wait to get from the Viking ship to the roundabout,” she said.
This distance is about half a mile.
She said: “Coming back into Ramsgate along the new road puts you into two lanes, but as soon as you are across the other side it is straight back into one lane, meaning everyone is trying to cut in front.
“(It’s an) absolute nightmare, as people haven’t got a clue which lane to be in or what lights to look at.
“I have now been using the new road both ways, but it is still a nightmare with sitting halfway round the roundabout with the lights on red, with no cars actually going, and traffic just backing up behind, stopping other cars being able to move.”
Other drivers have told KoS the situation is unbearable and instead of improving access has turned the traffic hot-spot – one of the main routes into Thanet from Dover and London – into a no-go area.
The new road and junction changes were built by KCC with £81.25m funding from the Department for Transport and £5.75m from KCC.
It formed part of a programme of improvements, with almost five miles of the A256 and A299 upgraded to dual carriageway and changes at the Lord of the Manor junction.
The East Kent Access Road scheme was developed to improve access to boost economic growth and help create new jobs in the area.
Transport minister Norman Baker joined KCC leader Paul Carter and MP for South Thanet Laura Sandys for the opening last week.
At the time Ms Sandys said the road would see journey times greatly reduced.
She stressed it would show investors east Kent is open for business.
But with the current problems faced by drivers – who also struggle with severely congested traffic just up the road outside Westwood Cross shopping complex – it is yet to be seen whether this will be the case.
A KCC spokeswoman stressed it would not be beneficial to make adjustments to the traffic light timings at this early stage to try and tackle the problem.
“In the meantime we will ensure that there are temporary signs in place stating that the new road is open to try to encourage vehicles to use this excellent new road,” she said.
Source: www.kentnews.co.uk
Why not help us to keep it in the family? - Daily Telegraph
Yet grandparents have never been so scarce. In many cases, their children’s geographical mobility accounts for this: when mum and dad live in Lyme Regis and the daughter works in London, it’s difficult to be a hands-on granny. Divorce is another reason: more than one million grandparents are forbidden from seeing their little treasures by angry and bitter exes bent on revenge. How perversely self-defeating, given that grandparents, representing continuity and unconditional love, can help heal the trauma of divorce.
But encouraging the extended family makes sense not only in terms of the feel-good factor; it is a plus for hard-headed policy-makers too. One in five of us will be over 65 by 2020 – even more, as the decades pass: for politicians, that’s a hefty constituency. (This should be especially true of Tory politicos, given that almost half of Conservative votes come from the over- 65s.) If these pensioners can rely more on their families and less on the state to see them through the final phase of their life, that’s a huge bonus – especially now that there are fewer young people to pay into the pension pot.
Nursing-home costs are high: £800 a week. Many of the elderly are having to sell their homes to finance their last years; the rest have to rely on the state to do so. The Government would be stupid to ignore the better alternative, wherever it is possible: keeping it all in the family, whereby the OAP contributes his or her pension to their child’s household income – but gets living accommodation, not to mention a raison d’être, in exchange.
Pensioners are patients, too. NHS administrators, consultants, nurses, cleaners, as well as social workers dread the tsunami of the aged flooding their hospitals, care and nursing homes. How to cater for the needs of so many, who are old and frail? Older people are high users of health care – roughly 4.5 times higher, for those 65 and over, than those under 65. They’ve been dubbed bed-blockers – and the term, though unkind, is not wholly inappropriate: a geriatric consultant told me that more than half of the elderly in hospital could have been at home, but social workers refused to discharge them as they lived alone. On their own, they risked an accident that would send them back into Accident and Emergency.
If only the “bed-blocker” could tell the weary-looking social worker with her clipboard and box-ticking bedside manner that “home” is a granny flat tucked away in their daughter’s house. The patient would be released, the hospital and social worker relieved of their duty of care. Back home, a family yearning for the return of a grandparent would have their inner circle completed once more. What a healthy way to run a society that would be.
Source: www.telegraph.co.uk
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