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Not perfect but all in all Drayton Manor Park travel management group doing its job well…

I’ve written a lot over the past two years about the traffic and travel problems in Fazeley and the future growth of Drayton Manor Park.

In the last week I’ve received a comprehensive report on the traffic movements for the season just finished.

Matthew Ellis with Colin Bryan of Drayton Manor Park

It was the back end of 2008 after a series of talks with the owners of Drayton Manor Park, Staffordshire Highways, national Highways Agency and Staffordshire Police that I reached agreement to establish a project to tackle the traffic congestion problems in a more structured way.

So, in February 2009 the Travel Management Group was formerly established and Drayton Manor Park commissioned a specialist company to coordinate things and provide expert technical advice and information.

Over the last 9 months a series of measures have been put in place involving new signage on the M6Toll, changes in signage on the motorway networks around Birmingham, Warwickshire and Tamworth, new entry and exit arrangements to the theme park and new car parks inside the Manor funded to the tune of nearly £400k by the owners.

The result is a general improvement to traffic flows in the area despite a very large increase in visitor numbers to Drayton Manor Park. But there were a couple of serious blips in August which again brought the area to a halt.

Those, however were not the result of Park numbers but were caused by a utility company carrying out emergency roadworks near to the traffic lights in Mile Oak. Absolute madness at the busiest visitor times for the Park and I’m not entirely convinced it was the level of emergency that warranted the resulting gridlock which Drayton Manor Park got the blame for.

Growing visitor numbers to the Park

As a result of the report just completed more tweaks will be made to operations and signage and, above all, Staffordshire Highways will be much tougher on allowing utility companies to carry out any works which could cause traffic chaos in the area at key Park visitor times.

The report does prove what worked and what didn’t but overall it paints a pretty positive picture. It’s now down to the national Highways Agency to agree to turn the pilot signage schemes on motorways into permanent ones and I’ll play my part in making sure that happens.

There are also plans afoot to improve local signage in the Mile Oak area to stop coaches following their sat-navs onto the Deer Park estate and improvements for next season to public transport to encourage visitors from further afield to use new special train services to Tamworth and then by shuttle bus to the Park.

All in all I’m pleased with the work done and really pleased that with the help of several agencies there is a much clearer picture of how traffic in the area moves during busy and quieter times. And that is the most important thing to ensure onging improvements.

What is clear still as a result of this is the need for traffic infrastructure improvement for the wider Ventura Park area and probably the Fazeley island by the Town Hall. I’ll press for that next year although the national finances mean that budget may be even harder to find. We’ll have a go though.

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“It looked like the multi-agency group set up to combat traffic congestion had worked pretty well until recently”

Problems with big delays on the roads in Fazeley was not what I wanted on my return from holiday.

On the whole the measures put in place in the last six months by Drayton Manor Park, the Highways Agency, Warwickshire Highways, Birmingham City Council and Staffordshire Highways have seen an improvement to traffic flows despite very big increases in visitor numbers to the Park. 

Better at Easter but problems recently

But something went wrong at times in the last couple of weeks and local people again had to put up with intollerable delays. That’s just not on and the traffic management group will now examine in detail what caused them and find some solutions.

To be fair, Drayton Manor Park replied to my urgent request for information at the time within a couple of hours with a very full and detailed response. The initial thoughts do offer me some reassurance but I need to understand more fully what the Park’s new traffic management group think. 

The main causes appear to be external ones on the roads in the wider area. Some road works at Mile Oak (which to me doesn’t seem very sensible at this time of the year unless it was an emergency) caused traffic to back down to Fazeley island, so blocking the exits.

Better roads in the wider area needed

It appears, in the main, that the Park’s improved arrangements to get traffic in and out worked pretty well other than for one ’shunt’ which held things up for a while and a couple of coaches ending up at the wrong entrance because of satelite navigation problems.  

Major delays at the new Morrison’s island and also Two Gates traffic lights caused chaos further out and the new signage for exiting the motorway to the theme park saw cars arriving locally even sooner than was expected. 

So, although enormously frustrating for local people, the traffic management professionals should have a clear idea of how to deal with this and I’ll make sure the measures needed are put in place.

Queues around Ventura Retail Park area

The wider traffic issues around this add very useful weight to my calls for a fuller review of traffic around Ventura Park and towards Tamworth. I’ll use this to push that even harder.

These events do cause me concern around the proposed developments, both residential in the area and at the Park, in relation to road capacity and infrastructure. I’ll now be revisiting the traffic parts of the different proposals in light of recent events and will write again about last week’s issues once I’ve met with the traffic management group.

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With the issues of congestion around Drayton Manor Park in Fazeley easing because of the work I managed to secure on traffic management and infrastructure improvements, attention is now turning to the problem of queues at the Ventura Retail Park near Tamworth.

It’s been a major issue ever since the development of the shopping centre because the road infrastructure just wasn’t adequate and over recent years it’s been getting worse and worse as traffic increases. And with my Party now in control of Staffordshire it’s a great opportunity to lobby for some investment in the area to ease the problems.

It’s early days, only a week into the new Administration, but the newly elected County Councillors for Tamworth and I are now setting to work on lobbying for a capital scheme for Ventura Park. It won’t be quick but, as promised, we’ll give it our best shot.

We’re arranging the first meeting with officials on the subject next month so I’ll write again about how we get on then.

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Well, the Easter Bank Holiday rush at Drayton Manor Park seemed to go pretty well according to the Authorities, the Park and local people who have contacted me despite a big increase in visitor numbers to Thomas Land.

The only slightly more serious congestion in Fazeley was caused by a traffic shunt in the area which was completely unrelated to the theme park activities. So, all the effort to get the new signage and traffic management arrangements in place in time for Easter appears to have been worth it.

I’m grateful to Drayton Manor Park for the huge amount of work they’ve done, the Highways Agency for pulling out all the stops to get around some tiresome national traffic management policy, Warwickshire County and Birmingham City Council for their assistance and Staffordshire  County Highways for helping me pull it all together. 

The scheme put in place a few weeks ago was a pilot and I’ve got a meeting with all the different bodies involved shortly to firm things up and agree tweaks to the system. I’m keen to see Drayton Manor Park grow its business but it’s vital it doesn’t cause big problems for local people. I think we’re well on the way to achieving that and the ‘green’ travel plans which will come into place at the Park during this year should assist things further.

It’s nice when an idea turns into something of genuine use to real people.

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