Marlborough is facing “nightmare traffic conditions” unless urgent action is taken on the roads through the town, which are glued up with heavy lorries already breaking accepted pollution levels.
A warning of increasing chaos has been given by Marlborough’s Mayor, Councillor Guy Loosmore, who chairs a Wiltshire working party studying the problem, when the town council’s Planning Committee debated the situation.
A challenging suggestion was made by Councillor Peggy Dow, who declared: “I would like to meet Wiltshire highways officers at 4.30pm on Friday evening and show them the huge queues that bring Salisbury Road to a standstill.”
And Councillor Richard Allen interjected: “Perhaps we can get TV cameras there as well.”
And the Mayor protested that the “nightmare” would increase as the major new housing Crown Estate development went ahead together with housing on the failed former Sainsbury’s supermarket site.
“If we don’t take this seriously we will find ourselves, in about six years time, with a monumental traffic issue,” he told councillors.
“Already have one scheme for 224 houses, which means 400 plus cars, plus a drop off point for students at St John’s Academy.
“There is a physical, geographic issue that can be managed but without it happening we are heading for a nightmare.”
Councillor Justin Cook, who runs a taxi service in Marlborough, pointed out that the roads were the arteries of our town’s business and, as such, there was a need for a sensitive, finely balanced operation to be considered.
Yet there was a Wiltshire Council proposal to install extended high kerbs to control – and deter — the traffic in Salisbury Road. (As Marlborough News Online reported in May.)
“Whoever is thinking that is going to work is crackers,” he protested. “Don’t they have any concept of the butchery that happens on that road on a Friday afternoon? I am wondering whether we can get to speak to these people and tell them. You have no idea.
“I don’t want us to be sleepwalking into something so appalling. What are they doing about it?”
The Mayor added: “We need to invite highways to a meeting and take them out into the town at the critical points in the day to demonstrate the effect of what they are suggesting and invite them to put forward a sensible workable strategy for the long term future of Marlborough.
“It is a very complicated subject. The only way we can put restrictions on the north/south route is to de-prime it, which is a highly complex matter where government has to take a decision.”
An air quality control report claimed that 2,500 HGV lorries a day come through Marlborough every day and the figures suggested that 75 per cent of them were serving Marlborough itself. “That’s a figure which I find incredible.” he said.
“The report shows that we are exceeding the national pollution guidelines and it is a requirement on Wiltshire Council that they come up with a strategy how they are going to reduce levels below that exceeded in various parts of Marlborough.
“ But this is something that is being worked on but it is an incredibly slow process.”
Councillor Margaret Rose, who took the chair, suggested the town council should call a public meeting and invite representatives of all the local parishes to attend as well as corporate interests.
While individual and corporate responses will be welcomed by the town council, that was turned down in favour of making direct representations via the Marlborough and Salisbury area boards.
They will be recommended to look at the wider concerns about traffic congestion and the local road network and an invitation issued to county highways officers to discuss the overall position with town councillors.
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