Local traffic improvement bids

Sustauned by tea and biscuits, a small panel of county councillors, including me, spent a total of nine hours over two days listening to - and scoring - bids from parish councils seeking funding for local traffic improvement schemes.The quality of the bids varied, from ones where a residents survey had been carried out, to demonstrate local support, and which came with realsitic costings and evidence of engagement with the county's engineers on practical matters, to - well, let's just say - proposals very much in development.

Many villages across the southern part of the county were not designed for the speed and volume of modern traffic, and there was a good debate as to what actually works - whether displays that show your speed have any effect on people who know they are driving too fast but actually don't particularly care? Whether "buffer zones" which give motorists time to move from 70 to 40 to 30 mph do have an effect. Sometimes it is simply about moving the speed limit sign a bit further out so that people have a chance to slow down before it is too late. This is a good example where the signs are too close to the houses, which are just round the curve, hidden in the shadows.

You certainly come away with an encyclopaedic knowledge of traffic problems across the county by the end of it. We were well supported by the expertise of the highways officers. Results of the process are due in February. Good luck to all who bid.