kendalian wrote:
Just got back home from my first outing to Kendal since Sunday's changes.
Would be interested to hear others views on the state of play so far (Ernest, JT, IanH etc).
A few observations of mine -
1) Marks & Sparks car park less than half full (normally packed...) - so another store soon to complain "our trade is down x% since the traffic changes...."
This is a real worry. The proximity with which Mrs H can park her car to M&S front door is inversely proportional to the amount of clobber she can carry from M&S to the car. Spookily enough it's also directly proportional to the amount left in my bank balance at the end of the month!!
Any road strategy which leaves easy to fill parking spaces at or around M&S is an unmitigated disaster
.
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3) Many pedestrians ignoring the red stop man and crossing Lowther Street & All Hallows Lane forcing traffic to stop (yes, far more than used to do it!!)
Is that possible?? As someone who regularly descends from All Hallows lane down Lowther street, I never fail to be surprised by the lemming run over Lowther Sreet at precisely the same time as the lights change to green for me to drive through them
:goosip: :goosip: !!
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4) Counted at least 10 vehicles (including contractors!) ignoring the no entry signs and driving what is now the "wrong way" down the road - one for Ian....
I've only seen it three times, once by myself and then by the patrol car behind, - we were attending an immediate response incident in town from the south side of town.
Third time was when I was overtaken by someone when I was cycling north through town. they were completely lost when they tried to park at McDonalds
. Like any new road layout we'll need a bit of time to erase the memory patterns of the old system. I can see me having to do plenty of this
, but not too many of these
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5) Madcap system at Windermere end - nearly a one mile detour instead of going straight ahead onto Stricklandgate (how is this environmentally friendly??). Why now ban a right turn into Maude Street?
..and it's not clear enough. Many cars are still going straight ahead from Windermere Road side, certainly at night time which is as yet my only experience of the new system. I'd like to see some better signing of the compulsory left turn there.
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Is that 20mph limit legal? No lolipop signs up at all to indicate its starting point, only the markings on the road. No end of 20mph signs either at the town hall...
No it's not enforcable, not until the signs are up.
My big concern which I have identified to our traffic management officer, is that the traffic lights at Lowther street show green at the same time from opposite sides of the main road, so traffic coming out of the pedestrianised zone can be shown a green light to turn left or right, at the same time as the main northbound traffic flow is moving. This may again be more of a night time issue, but it needs to be sorted. I witnessed a couple of near misses in the last couple of nights!
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Ok it's only been in force 2 days, so we'll need to give it time to settle down, but first impressions not great...!
There's still much tweaking to be done, and a lot of signs to be installed, and repositioned etc, but Rome wasn't built in a day.