Things continue to drag on and no date has yet been set for the planning hearing.  There are however a few interesting developments.

Meadow Lane traffic queues

On closer inspection of Barratt Homes traffic assessment, it appears that there are certain anomalies with the number of vehicles they say queue at the end of Meadow Lane to turn out into Longton Road during peak hours.  I’ve mentioned previously that Barratt Homes claim that the maximum length of the queues on the day they did their illegitimate survey was no more than 3 vehicles.  Honestly…  thats what they claim.   As the results of the critical Transport Assessment depend on the depth of the queues and we all know that 3 can’t possibly be correct, we took a look at our evidence from the day of their survey.   It will be no surprise to readers that we found no evidence that they actually counted the traffic queues at Meadow Lane, whereas in fact we have gathered substantial evidence that they didn’t actually count the queues at Meadow Lane.

With this in mind, on behalf of residents we have commissioned a professional company to queue count over a number of days next week.  This will give us a representative count of the reality of peak hour queues at the junction.  It will be interesting to see if the maximum length of the queues comes out at 3 won’t it?

Meeting with Barratt Homes

Residents will I’m sure be ‘delighted’ to know that after almost a year Barratt Homes have asked to meet representatives of our residents committee.  The suspicious side of me thinks that this is a box ticking exercise to strengthen Barratt Homes position, however this does present the first opportunity to actually communicate with Barratt Homes officially in 12 months, so we’ve agreed to their request to meet.

Given Barratt Homes unfathomable behaviour to date and their reliance on the Council not having a 5 year supply of housing land to bulldoze their application through, we want a focussed meeting and have mutually agreed to send Barratt homes a number of questions for them to fully prepare for.   The meeting takes place on the afternoon of Friday 2nd October.

Our questions are evidence based and focus on areas where Barratt Homes position is incomprehensible.  the first few questions are reproduced below and we’ll report Barratt Homes responses back via this web site

QUESTIONS

Q1. We believe that Barratt Homes agree that the effective lane width of Longton Road East is 3.6m and West is 3.6m, this being the actual roadway available to traffic between the central ghost island and the cycle lanes.

• Why have the effective lane widths of Longton Road been mis-represented in the two versions of the TA traffic capacity assessments? (the same road shown as having effective lane widths of 7.5m and 8.5m?)
• Do Barratt Homes support your own data confirming that the effective lane widths of East and West Longton Road lanes are 3.6m in each direction.
• Do Barratt Homes propose to submit a TA consistent with your own measurements of effective lane width?

Q2. Barratt Homes misrepresent your own data in the site sections document showing incorrect land heights.

• Why?
• Will you guarantee a new version is correct?

Q3. The Meadow Lane estate is effectively an island isolated on all sides. There is only one possible access route to the Meadow Lane estate by foot and vehicle. This is the first 200m of Meadow Lane and Barratt Homes do not propose to provide any other emergency access route by foot or vehicles.

• What precedents or guidance are Barratt Homes relying on to demonstrate that it is acceptable for such a design with a single access for journeys on foot, residential and construction traffic with no separate construction traffic access?
• What precedents or guidance are Barratt Homes using to demonstrate that it is SAFE to have a such a single 200m access to an estate of 371 + 245 (total 616) houses plus construction traffic with no possibility of emergency access or evacuation to/from the estate by vehicle or foot by any other route.

Q4. Barratt Homes model of a truck passing safely through the estate is unrealistic and takes no account of parked vehicles in the normal scenario, particularly at the end of meadow lane.

• Do Barratt Homes propose to re-run the model with a realistic scenario with parked vehicles at the beginning and end of Meadow Lane and Chessington Crescent?

Q5. Regarding the traffic queue counts used in your recent TA: As there were no Traffic Sense people positioned at the Meadow Lane junction to observe and count the traffic queues, we assume the queues were calculated from video footage taken by the two cameras positioned on Longton Road either side of the Meadow lane junction.

• is our understanding correct?
• if not correct, how were the queues observed?
• if not correct, where were the queues observed from?
• if not correct, by what means were the queues observed and recorded?
• if video was used to count the queues, please provide a copy of the footage so that we may validate the queue counts. Or arrange for us to view the footage.

Q6. We are delighted to hear that you have secured an agreement to provision an hourly bus service to the new development, which will also be of benefit to existing residents.

• Please confirm that our understanding is correct
• If correct, please provide copies of the formal correspondence, including confirmation that the bus company have agreed

If correct, please supply the plan for delivery of the service including:-
a) Agreed timescales; Start of subsidised service; End of subsidised service.
b) Cost of providing the service and forecast of when the service will be economically viable to ensure it is sustained beyond the subsidised period.

Q7. The Consultee Comment for Education dated 4th February 2015 clearly shows that there is no capacity at the four primary schools in the area to absorb additional children from this development.

• Do you agree?
• If not please provide your analysis as to why the Consultee is incorrect.
• If not, please share the evidence you base your assertion on.