Calls for traffic-calming measures on road with ‘history’ of crashes

Nicholas Thomas, Local Democracy Reporter

Traffic-calming measures should be installed along a stretch of road in a south Wales city to avoid future crashes, a councillor has argued.

Cllr David Fouweather said his road safety calls in Newport had so far been unsuccessful, however, because crash data did not meet funding thresholds.

He said the stretch of Bassaleg Road between the Western Avenue and the Pye Corner junctions had a “documented history of collision”, and it was “pretty poor” of the council to turn down his request.

“Unless something very serious happens there, they won’t do anything,” he claimed.

Cllr Fouweather said he was told funding for traffic-calming measures was based on the number of serious incidents and injuries linked to a stretch of road, and without further evidence of personal injury collisions or other casualties, it is unlikely requests for more safety features would be successful.

But he argued traffic-calming measures would be preventative and could “save lives” – and installing them now was preferable to risking any future incidents along the stretch of road.

A spokesperson for Newport City Council said: “Different factors are assessed in considering road safety improvement schemes, including personal injury collisions over a certain period of time and whether implementation of those measures would lead to a reduction in those incidents”.

The main source of funding for schemes is the Welsh Government’s road safety capital fund, with bids submitted annually through a regional partnership.

“They have to meet a number of objectives, including reducing the number of people killed or seriously injured in road traffic collisions or where there have been a significant number of slight injury collisions,” the council spokesperson explained.

“In the past three years, one serious injury and one slight personal injury collision were recorded by Gwent Police on this stretch of road.”

The spokesperson said the council had also made its own funding available “to respond to sites of community concern – however, Bassaleg Road was not one of the locations put forward to the council for consideration, and the funding is now fully committed”.

---

Get more trusted Welsh news

Choose Nation.Cymru as a preferred source in Google News to see more of our journalism.