| Topic: | Re:Re:Re:Re:Re:West Chiswick and Gunnersbury Society | |
| Posted by: | Michael Robinson | |
| Date/Time: | 09/12/15 09:41:00 |
| "There are about 2,000 new homes currently planned within a kilometre of Chiswick Roundabout and conservatively they will create 2 extra vehicular movements a day per unit. 4,000 journeys is probably a small percentage of the total traffic in the area" The Department of Transport have vehicle measuring points throughout the road network and data from these is available from their website. Using the measuring point near Chiswick roundabout (on CHR between Clarence Rd and Wellesley Rd), 4,000 vehicles a day would represent an increase of about 15% on the 2014 average daily figure of just over 26,000. However because traffic at this location has been steadily declining since 2000, an increase in 15% would bring traffic back to the level it was in 2011, which would still be less than traffic in the preceding 10 years. However just because traffic has reduced doesn't mean congestion reduces. I'm not aware of particular changes around Chiswick roundabout but CHR vehicle capacity (but not people capacity) has been reduced because of re-allocation of road space to bus lanes since 2000. Personally I think there will always be congestion around Chiswick roundabout. The bottleneck is the road over Kew Bridge and there won't be anything done about that, and changing signal timings just "robs Peter to pay Paul". So rather than try and "solve" something that personally I think can't be solved, my opinion is the focus should be to mitigate against the negative aspects of congestion. So even if the roads are congested, ensure that people can still get around easily on foot or on a bike, and do something about rat-running along Wellesley Rd and Stile Hall Gardens so congestion on CHR / Chiswick roundabout doesn't also clog up residential streets with through traffic. |