200+ RESIDENTS SUPPORT HIGHWAYS CHANGES TO BYWELL ROAD

4.24.00am GMT Mon 11th Dec 2006

Cllr Dennis Hullock (Lib Dem, Dewsbury East Ward)

- Residents respond on mass to local roads consultation

- Plateau and traffic lights backed by vast majority

Cllr Dennis Hullock (Lib Dem, Dewsbury East Ward) has received over 200 survey replies from residents giving their views on what needs to be done to improve the highway on Bywell Road.

"This has been a very successful consultation exercise" says Cllr Hullock "It has provoked a massive response from local people wanting to give their view on how the road should be improved".

Cllr Hullock has gone door to door over the past two months delivering a survey to residents living on and around Bywell Road.

The survey set out two options for altering the highway.

These are

(1) Installing a traffic calming plateau at the junction of Bywell Road and Canterbury Road

(2) Installing traffic lights at the junction of Bywell Road and Leeds Road.

These two options were offered to residents for comment as they would help deal with issues of speeding traffic on Bywell Road as well traffic flow and road safety at its north junction, all of which residents raised as issues of concern with Cllr in response to a survey he conducted last year.

RESULTS

182 out of 222 residents voted in favour of installing the traffic calming plateau.

208 out of 222 residents voted in favour of installing traffic lights at the road's junction with Leeds Road.

"The idea of the traffic calming plateau came from a report that came to the area committee. I have written to residents asking for their view as a survey I did last year highlighted speeding traffic as one of residents' main concerns. I wanted to make sure with them that this could be the right way forward. Thanks to the help of local residents I am now in a position to back the plateau when it comes back to the committee for decision. It is clearly something people are in favour of happening" says Cllr Hullock.

"The need for traffic lights at the junction of Bywell Road and Leeds Road also came from a survey I did last year. Numerous residents asked for traffic lights to be installed at the Bywell Road/Leeds Road junction like there are at Wakefield Road end. Residents feel this would help traffic flow at the junction and make it a safer place to cross for students attending Earlsheaton H.S. There are as many students coming from that direction as there are from the Wakefield Road end, so their safety should be given equal weighting and traffic lights with some sort of crossing would certainly achieve that" says Cllr Hullock.

"I have written to the council's Highways Service asking that engineers provide me with an assessment of the situation at the junction with regard to the issues residents have raised and letting me know as to whether traffic lights would be a feasible way of bringing about an improvement the junction".