Last night saw the Town Council debating the issues around the Dorchester Transport and Environment Plan, listening to the views of local residents and then giving our views to Dorset County Council.

The Town Council decided to back the scheme in principle but asked for a number of significant changes to be made to meet the concerns of residents.

I summarised the main six points that needed to be changed as:

1.  North Square/Colliton Street/Friary Lane etc.  Should broadly be left as they are now but with possible improvements to include a 20mph speed limit and ‘access only’ signs

2.  Princes Street should not be used as a bus route

3.  Great Western Road should be made one-way in phase 1.  This would deal with the problems of increased traffic volume and air pollution and allow for all the residents parking to be kept

4.  The Junction should be made easier to navigate and more pedestrian friendly.  This would help make 3 above work and stop the perception of Brewery Square becoming cut off by closing access to/from Prince of Wales Road and look at moving the pedestrian crossing closer to the bottom of South Street

5.  Top O’ Town needs to be made safer for pedestrians and

6.  Cornwall Road/Borough Gardens/Victoria Road needs to see traffic pushed out to Williams Avenue.  In addition County needs to look at the problems of rat running being experienced in the one-way part of Cornwall Road and see if anything works (reversing the traffic flow?).

These are the conditions that have to be met if I am going to support DTEP.

So how do we move forward from here?

A guiding principle is that County needs to be open and transparent and seen to be working with the local community.  For me that means after the consultation is finished there will need to be significant modifications, then the traffic and air pollution models will need to be run again and finally there will have to be a further stage of public consultation.

It is far better to spend a bit of time getting this right rather than rushing ahead with a flawed Plan.

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