The new Our Island political movement has helped to launch a local ‘Living Streets’ group on the Isle of Wight.
Our Island says they are committed to supporting the local High Streets and creating town centre experiences which prioritise people over traffic.
As part of this commitment, the movement supports 20mph schemes in appropriate locations and will support campaigns to create these. To assist with this aim, Our island is helping to set up a local ‘Living Streets’ group.
‘Living Streets’ is a national charity which was established in 1929 to promote walking. In its early years, its campaigning led to the UK’s first zebra crossing as well as the introduction of speed limits on UK roads. It now promotes and supports various projects including enabling children to walk to school wherever possible, stopping pavement parking and regenerating high streets as pedestrian-friendly areas.
Living Streets is calling for a default national standard 20mph speed limit, including main roads and high streets, for areas where people live, work, shop and play. Already more than 20 urban authorities in the UK have a policy of setting 20mph as the default for all their streets.
One area on the Island where a 20mph zone is desperately needed, according to Our Island, is Havenstreet.
Laura Laurenson, Our Island candidate for Havenstreet, Ashey and Newchurch in the forthcoming Council Elections has said:
“Havenstreet sees traffic passing through at great speed. Many local residents feel unsafe walking through the village and parked cars have been damaged. The village will benefit hugely from a 20moh speed limit. I am committed to doing what I can to help improve the safety of Havenstreet and hope that I can gather residents together to work to do this with the help of Living Streets.”
Article continues below this advertisement
If you are interested in getting involved in developing an Island Living Streets group and helping developing local schemes get in touch through [email protected].
Best tell the young lady in the photo not to stand in the road even for a photo opp. People who do tend to get run over.
Ha ha I was thinking that too. Looks to be someone who is more interested in appearance and how they look that any real substance. Shame really as I tend to agree with their view. The car should not be the first class citizen here.
She can’t care that much about appearance her knees are ripped out on her trousers .
The damaged cars in Havenstreet is not due to speed necessarily, it is often due to parking in stupid places on blind bends etc, where the car owners are to idle to walk a few more yards to ensure free flow of traffic.
Most drive slowly on this route as it is bendy and with so many cars parked. Many can’t be bothered to ‘use’ their drives and park on the road when they don’t have too.
THINK when P en ny F eat thers et al is FILLED with thousands of people and similar numbers of extra cars flooding out of Ryde to use these routes.
Making traffic ‘crawl’ at 20mph, just means then, a continuous stream of never ending traffic, rather than having a varying speed of cars, then giving ‘gaps’ in which people can cross, pull out, or come in or out of their drive ways.
Imagine if YOU had to follow for miles a car traveling at 20mph, then, you would have a never ending stream of cars behind you. Such will happen in Havenstreet, and the impatient will then overtake through Combley etc causing more, not less accidents.
These ‘dog gooders’ only see ‘one’ problem not realising they then create more severe issues just ‘out of sight’ of their ‘patch’.
We need to curb mass building on the Island, not blame the people who own cars now, for the greed of the council and developers ‘wishes’
THINK, then vote these greedy beings OUT
YOU have nailed it Oz. Spot on comments.
Whilst ridding our towns and some streets of traffic and turning them into traffic free zones seems a great idea, it only pushes the traffic somewhere else, it doesn’t vanish.
Also, as we see now, in many pedestrian zones, they then become a magnet for druggies, drunks and violent individuals to cluster, which rarely happens on busy areas.
As said already, this greedy en-masse building by our self serving council will be used to ‘punish’ us innocent car drivers now, so they can grow richer and ensure they live well away from the horrendous traffic issues which can only follow such unorganic buiding here.
That ‘lady’ would do more good strapping herself to a tree to prevent building, rather than now making the already slow progress of driving from A to B, ever more painful.
The council will do that for us.
Vote them out at the next given chance.
what really needs to happen is ..no parking on those narrow roads – that will help
Someone hits the nail on the head. It’s the parked cars that make the village dangerous full stop. Parked cars on main roads reduce visibility and increase risk taken by drivers. But that’s not what residents want to hear because then that creates a whole new problem for them.
The woman in the photo needs to buy some new trousers .her knees are hanging out .
Traffic free zones? we’ve got almost no towns left too make Traffic free zones, and those that are left are patrolled by council little Hitlers doing there best to drive you out of town…
Don’t worry our island your wish will come true very soon.