Congestion in Fazeley back again!
“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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4 comments
Mr Ellis
Like many people over the years we have put up with some traffic inconvenience because of Drayton Manor Park. More recently things have certainly improved and I think we should be able to put up with the odd difficult day bearing in mind the jobs that Drayton Manor Park provides for local people. Although irritating in our high speed world, worse things do happen. Thanks for your efforts for us.
Dear Matthew,
On a slightly different aspect re the traffic conjestion in Fazeley. We live on the Deer Park, in Reindeer Road, and this year have noted a considerable increase in the amount of traffic comming onto the estate trying to access Drayton Manor Park. They are all using Sat Nav! Their Sat Navs are trying to send them up the gated and now one way Drayton Manor Drive as a result of which they all end up on Deer Park. They then drive round and round the estate trying to find Drayton Manor. Can anything be done to stop this traffic from coming onto the estate in the first place. All this extra traffic is a hazard to the residents. At times it is as if a car club has organised a car treasure hunt as the drivers try to find their way into the Manor. We even have cars towing caravans driving round.
Sorry to make the traffic issue even more protracted but this year, as more people get sat navs, it has started to get out of hand.
Thank you for your time,
Richard Tropman
Richard,
Many thanks for this. I’ve asked the DMP Traffic Management Group to look at this following a letter to me from Tony Brookes, one of your local councillors.
Interestingly, for some reason, the problem of Sat Navs misdirecting traffic appears to be growing across the board. I’m hopeful the TMG will deal with this but if they have any problems I will deal with it.
On the whole we’ve found the congestion less. We used to drive on a 4 mile detour to avoid the Drayton Manor Park area all the way through the holidays and other busy times.
Only 16 extra I know but it all adds to cost and time. More often than not recently we’ve not done that. There were just a couple of occassions when we had to take the detour which is much better. Thanks to the owners for their efforts… and yours too.
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