Tuesday 29 October 2013

Road Safety - Glamis Road

In recent months, I have had a number of constituents raise the issue of safe pedestrian crossing at Glamis Road at its south end.    As one constituent highlighted recently:

'My wife and I are regular pedestrians along Perth Road from our house to town.  My wife walks to and from her work in town every day.  

It has always been a problem, but as we get older, crossing Glamis Road at its junction with Perth Road is getting more dangerous.  It is a very wide junction, and although you can check there are no cars planning to turn into Glamis Road when you start crossing, because of the speed of cars along Perth Road and the time it takes to cross the junction, on numerous occasions we have had near misses with cars whose drivers appear to have little respect for pedestrians and the Highway Code.   I have been able to touch cars as they turn in front of me. 

Would it be possible to place a refuge island in the middle of the junction as there is at the Spar circle further up Glamis Road or at the Junction of Perth Road and Riverside Drive just west of the Invercarse Hotel?'

I have been in discussion with the City Council regarding this sensible suggestion and the council's Head of Transportation has updated me as follows:

"I will arrange for this location to be inspected for the best location to be considered. 

I have had initial advice from the traffic engineers and certain factors have to be taken in to account such as pedestrian movement and count as well as the carriageway width.  Ideally the carriageway should be sufficiently wide enough to construct a 2.0m wide island and provide a 0.5m wide safety zone for construction and maintenance. 

For normal traffic including buses and HGV the absolute minimum width of lane is 3.0m with desirable 3.25m. Therefore to maintain two way flow for construction and maintenance to minimise disruption would require the carriageway to measure 9.0m absolute minimum and 9.5m desirable minimum. 

If this section of carriageway meets the criteria I will arrange for this location to be considered for inclusion with a future Cycling Walking and Safer Street (CWSS) Projects Programme."