Swansea Council Raises Fears of Road Deaths

Dear Sir

Re: Swansea Councils road width reductions impacting on safety of residents. Is this a rerun of the City Centre road structure fiasco?

May I firstly apologise for sending this unsolicited e-mail, however I feel that my concerns are not being appropriately listened too by Swansea Council and find myself having to write to you directly in respect of this matter. I have written directly to the Councils Chief Executive but have received nothing but a simply acknowledgement.

Basically the Council are making provision for additional cycle lines across the Swansea area due to year end monies being made available to enable them to carry out these works. Which of course should be applauded. However, as a consequence of building the new cycle lanes this has lead to a significant reduction in the width of many roads. This is especially the case on Mayals Road where the reduction has been in the region of approximately 5 metres (about 2.3 metres per side).

Mayals Road is a busy road and fast road which is the gateway to the Gower. Therefore traffic volumes are always high and the reduction in road width will lead to additional accidents. This is made worse in that there are never any traffic wardens to stop illegal parking or mobile speed units. In addition, they have also created shared use paths (cyclists and pedestrians). The key issue is that these are on a steep hill, meaning many cyclists will speed down the path potentially injuring children and pedestrians as they attempt to make their way to the beach.

The reduction in road widths also impacts on individual property owners attempting to access or leave their property. In my particular case there are major ramifications, I will either have to attempt a 3 point turn in the road to get into my drive, causing a backlog of vehicles in Mayals Road, or swing so far across the white line into oncoming traffic as to block the entire road. I am one of a number of individuals that will be affected and who will be subjected to an increase risk of injury and death by this ill informed and poorly designed scheme.

I have met on site with Andy (the site agent) who fully gets the issue and also someone called Richard (from the Council) who also fully understood my concerns. However, it is obvious that although they understand the concern, senior officers within the Council are under strict instructions to get this scheme completed asap regardless of impact on both the road users and pedestrians.

At no stage prior to commencement of the scheme has anyone from the Council contact either myself or others to discuss the development. I understand that the original consultation, by that I mean advertised in the paper, was near 10 years ago. How can this be appropriate?

Council are putting residents lives at risk by pushing forward this ill thought out scheme, simply because they have received external funding that they need to spend. Is this not exactly the same as the Council did in the city centre, which lead to a death and the Council having to completely redesign the scheme at a cost of millions to the tax payers of Swansea.

I hope you find this story of interest and might be interested in publishing, after getting additional information from the Council.

If you wish to contact me to give any quotes or other information please do not hesitate to contact me at the address below or don’t hesitate to ring me directly.

Yours sincerely

Mark Parkinson