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Eastville Residents Protest Against M32 Death Trap

bristol | transport | news report

Tuesday December 02, 2008 11:36

by Josh Hart

velorution at yahoo dot com

07531134666

3 Elderly people killed by car within past year

Three elderly people have been killed, and one seriously injured by motor vehicles while crossing to Tesco from Eastville at Junction 2 of the M32 within the past 12 months. Local residents and safety campaigners have called upon the City Council and Highways Agency to stop the slaughter at Junction 2 by lowering the speed limit, installing a pedestrian crossing, and shutting the entrance to residential Stapleton Rd. to motor traffic from this junction.

Death by Design: Three People Dead and all the city council have done is put up a sign

Campaigners plan to keep up pressure on the Council and the Highways Agency. They are asking them to:

1. Immediately install warning signs for drivers using the roundabout to look out for people crossing

2. close off direct motor vehicle access from the Junction 2 roundabout to the beginning of Stapleton Rd. (the residential, one-way section that's currently a speedway and also severes a safe cycling route between the "Easton Bypass" and Eastville Park).

3. Lower the speed limit on the two lanes of the slip road and on the M32 within Bristol City Limits to 40mph. This will improve safety, encourage free flowing traffic, and reduce noise and air pollution impacts on adjacent residential communities.

4. Install a new signalised crossing over the slip road, coordinated with the other lights around the roundabout.

5. Install a 20mph speed limit within Bristol City limits. A pedestrian hit at under 20mph has a 5% chance of being killed. A pedestrian hit at 30mph or below has a 45% chance of being killed. Twenty is plenty where people live!

People are going to continue walking across from Eastville to Tesco because it is a desire line. The tunnels are considered by many to be more dangerous in terms of muggings, so people choose what they consider safest and most direct. And that is unfortunately across the (currently very dangerous) slip road. We need to make sure that is safe.

This is just one part of a high toll being suffered by Bristolians. Five hundred of us are killed or permanently crippled by motor vehicles every year. We have had more than our fair share in Easton lately, what with a man killed walking across Robertson Rd. last week as well. Yet this is consistent with the statistics- for every one child killed or injured on Clifton streets, roughly 25 Easton children are.....

WHAT YOU CAN DO

1. Forward this e-mail to 3-5 friends or neighbours- have them e-mail velorution@yahoo.com in order to add them to the list and keep everyone informed about the campaign. Talk to your neighbours about it!

2. write an e-mail to MP Kerry McCarthy at mccarthyk@parliamen t.uk and to stephenwilliamsmp@parliament.uk asking them to direct the Highways Agency to undertake the above emergency safety improvements to the junction

3. Write to your local councillor- for Eastville this is steve.comer@bristol.gov.uk and muriel.cole@bristol.gov.uk Ask for the above improvements to be undertaken as a priority. Please cc mark.bradshaw@ bristol.gov. uk

4. Also, please write letters into the Evening Post. These must be under 200 words and sent to: epletters@bepp.co.uk

Evening Post coverage here:
http://www.thisisbr istol.co. uk/news/Safe- crossing- killer-Bristol- junction/ article-512710- detail/article. html

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Comments (6 of 6)

Correct Evening Post Link

Tue Dec 02, 2008 11:39

Sorry that's:

http://www.thisisbristol.co.uk/news/Safe-crossing-kille....html

charlie says...

by stalin

Tue Dec 02, 2008 16:33

Nice one Josh - I live right near there and those signs really irritate me.

If I didnt already have one arrest this year for graf I would have modified them by now.

bad design

by rd

Wed Dec 03, 2008 02:18

The bad planning and design of the road systems in bristol (inc M32) should be changed from making cars priority to giving people walking and cycling a priority this would be done by some of the roads being in tunnels rather than pedestrians in tunnels at junctions. the council should ask for government and EU cash to rectify the mistakes of the council and government decisions in the 60's and 70's

The benefits to Bristol would be worth the cost . imagine if the land where the m32 enters bristol was open and free it would have a huge benefit.

i have always been puzzled by the M32, it is pointless as a motorway. It does not work properly it actually causes traffic jams by the nature of its design.

how do so many shops and supermarkets get planning permission with such bad access for pedestrians try getting of the bus and crossing the roads to ikea and tesco etc

costs

Thu Dec 04, 2008 13:46

I agree ' bad design'.

Each road death in the uk costs us all on average 2.6 MILLION.

Far cheaper to fix the problem then.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2007/feb/26/transport.world

get over it! (or under it!)

by sky

Sun Dec 07, 2008 23:57

ok i'll sumarise things really quickly.

The junction is well-designed, the signs should stay and pedestrians crossing here who die have only themselves to blame and they are paranoid, lazy and stupid.

yes i can back that up. here i go...
people are so quick to judge a car driver over a pedestrian. i've lived practically on this junction for 30 years. i grew up here. i crossed this junction as a toddler with my mother on the way to eastville market, as a kid with his first bike, as a school boy on his way to school, as a teen on his way to work at the dog track, and as an adult on the way to tesco...in all this time ive never seen ANY sign of trouble in the underpasses. I hereby declare such fears to be ridiculous paranoia.
oh...and if people are so fearful, the council has graciously installed alternative ABOVE GROUND crossings AS WELL!!! There is NO excuse to cross at this point without using the above-ground pedestrian crossings. would we accept drivers taking to pedestrianized areas because they didn't want to use the road? clearly not! so why do we not apply the same commonsense to pedestrians?
pedestrians risk life and limb un-necessarily on this junction by crossing on the slip road because it is a 'desire line' as the author stated. desire line means the laziest route.
so..we have paranoid lazy people who risk their lives and endanger motorists because they cant be bothered to use the carefully designed pedestrian routes of which they have 2 to choose from.

bad design? i think not! look at all that white fencing (pictured) the pedestrians have to walk around! think of those large pebbled areas on the road! they're there by design too! theyre uncomfortable to walk on - to discourage pedestrians. you have to try hard to cross the road here, it's actually more difficult to cross the slipway than to walk to the crossing - particularly if you are elderly or infirm.

pedestrians ignore the designs, choose the difficult route, circumvent the safety barriers, avoid the designated crossings for no good reason and risk everyones lives by doing so...some people are so stupid the council really DO have to spell it out for them....with a sign.

it is a bad design

Mon Dec 08, 2008 01:48

I meant bad design as a whole as in putting a motorway through a built up area with little thought for the impact it has. a road tunnel makes much more sense and the land on top could be used for stuff. They have them in other countries and city's, Dublin has a new road tunnel! calling pedestrians lazy is a bit daft it takes little physical effort to drive a car so why do city's fence in and heard around the pedestrians. Planners need to get out more and try using the streets. Bristol as with many city's is not pedestrian friendly it is designed around the car. i would not cross there but if people are, then putting the sign up is not gonna do much is it? i think the planners of that time were very bad probably the same planners for the old severn bridge - the welsh side has a tunnel for pedestrians but on the english side you have to cross an extremely dangerous road with very poor visibility of motorway speed vehicles

Another example of bad planning is in the centre- at the main crossing points for shoppers from broadmead to the new cabot circus there are no pedestrian crossings very bizarre! only in bristol.

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Eastville Residents Protest Against M32 Death Trap

Comments (6 of 6)