Quiet Lanes - an opportunity to be seized, or a risk to be avoided?

Twenty years ago, a young Baroness moved an amendment to the Transport Bill then under discussion which was intended to make it easier to establish Home Zones and Quiet Lanes. At the time, the Minister, Lord Whitty, was not entirely convinced but wanted to take it away for more thought. The outcome was Section 268, Transport Act 2000, and the young Baroness, who had been in the Lords for less than three months, was Ros.

The significance of that certainly didn’t hit me at the time - not only did I not know Ros, but the relevance of the legislation to an urban bureaucrat would not have been obvious.

However, this week, the idea of Quiet Lanes has been raised, as Suffolk County Council have launched a £235,000 tranche from its Suffolk 2020 Fund – a one-off pot set up for projects this year – to encourage town and parish councils to apply for potential quiet lanes in their area. Now, living in a village which has suffered from speeding for years - we have no pavements and the road through the core village is single track - the headline rather caught my eye as a potential opportunity.

There is a problem, however, in that there are only two routes into the village, both of them lengthy stretches of single track road. A 2006 circular, issued by the Department of Transport, suggests that the Quiet Lanes option is suitable for roads with less than 1,000 traffic movements per day.

You’d think that a village with a population of 200 would struggle to reach that, yet if you add in all of the vehicles that visit the village from outside, delivering things, carrying out tasks, visiting residents, the amount of traffic mounts up. We’re also an increasingly useful cut through allowing traffic to bypass Stowmarket.

So, there is a question of simple eligibility. However, there’s also a question of desirability. Do we, as a village, want to limit speeds on roads that don’t see so much non-vehicular traffic? What actual benefits might we see in return for any investment? 

The obvious solution is to consult with my colleagues, and with village residents as far as is possible. Luckily, we’ve got a village newsletter going out soon...

Life as an ambulatory traffic calmer

Winter. Dark, cold, but mostly dark. And that means that, in order to get my ten thousand steps in each day, I spend some time each evening walking around the village. Well, I say “around”, but given that the village consists of two roads, one of which is a cul de sac, that means walking a T-shape to the edges of the lit part of the village.

Pavements or, to be more accurate, footways, are not part of our local infrastructure, so I am obliged to walk in the road. And, as I am a responsible adult, I wear an orange hi-vis gilet, so that motorists can easily see me.

One of the side effects of this is that, on seeing me, drivers often slow down to obey the twenty miles per hour speed limit, on the off chance that I might be either a police officer or a community speedwatch patrol.

I’m not complaining.

Given that we are probably one of the most lightly policed counties in England, and that we don’t have a community speedwatch patrol - the road through the village is ill-suited to the use of a speed gun - I probably am the most effective way of enforcing the recently instituted speed limit.

It is well-signed, with big speed restriction signs on the entrances to the village, and repeater signs spaced evenly between the two, but, until recently, the road was still displaying the old thirty miles per hour limit, contradicting the signs. Now, however, that has been remedied, with additional surface decals emphasising the limit, which I’m pleased about.

Nonetheless, I suspect that my days of walking the mean streets of Creeting St Peter in darkness will still require the use of a hi-vis gilet, and traffic will still slow as it passes.

Just another job for the Chair of the Parish Council...