Wednesday 6 February 2008

'Efficiency savings' = creating danger on the roads

The photograph below shows Milton Road E17 looking down towards Hoe Street. All traffic MUST turn right at the junction in the foreground, which is where Browns Road begins. Beyond this junction the remaining length of Milton Road is NO ENTRY. But would any road user know it? There are no carriageway markings at all. And where are the NO ENTRY signs? See below for the answer and for an illustration of how the Council's 'efficiency savings' create road danger.








































Yes, there it is (below). A solitary NO ENTRY sign, easily hidden when a van or truck is parked (quite legally) in front of it. The Council decided to save money on quiet residential streets by only using one NO ENTRY sign instead of two. It also saves money on white paint by not painting NO ENTRY on the road surface. And the result is that some road users may quite inadvertently end up going down a one-way road the wrong way through no fault of their own. Anyone involved in a head-on smash in this situation would, I suspect, have a good case against this Council for negligence. But until someone gets killed and the Council gets denounced by a Coroner, I expect these potentially lethal 'efficiency savings' will continue to be made. After all, I've blogged about this sort of thing on Beulah Road