Good news earlier this week when the Council's Traffic Management Applications Committee agreed to the Lib Dem call for greater scrutiny of the Thames Valley Safer Roads Partnership (TVSRP) - a body comprising the Police and local Councils which controls speed cameras.
Why does this matter I hear you cry? Below follows I hope an explanation - apologies in advance for the number of acronyms in this post!
What feels like a long time ago I discovered that the speed camera at the top of Northumberland Avenue had a) no film in b) no one in either the Police or the Council could tell me when asked what it was doing or why it was there! No wonder residents were fed up with the accidents taking on their doorstep when neither the Police or the Council would accept responsibility for the speed camera. What a mess.
After months of what seemed to me buck passing, I did some research into speed cameras and found the website of the TVSRP. I then asked Cllr Ricky Duveen (our transport spokesman) to ask a few pertinent questions at the next TMAP meeting (last monday) about accountability etc of this obscure body.
I wanted to know primarily how speed cameras in Reading were being monitored and how the Council was scrutinising the performance of TVSRP against road safety targets.
Thanks to Ricky's probing TMAP has now agreed that there will be regular reports from the Partnership, especially now that member councils apparently have greater powers to direct what the partnership actually does. A senior officer subsequently thanked me for raising the issue as she had found the whole thing very frustrating.
It's vital that the Council does get on top of road safety on Northumberland Avenue. After all, there have been 35 accidents between Whitley Wood Lane and Christchurch Gardens in the last three years alone. Thankfully a road safety scheme for Northumberland Avenue is on the Council's programme of works for next year.
My personal view is that the speed limit should be 20mph along its length, given the residential nature of the road and the numbers of schools, shops etc. BRAKE has launched a national petition on this issue to get the government to ring-fence funding for these initiatve which you can sign here
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