In Defence of Traffic Engineers

Unblock the Roads of Raynes Park and West Barnes! The banner under which our local Residents Association organised a public meeting recently, addressing traffic blight in the neighbourhood: congestion, delays, pollution, asthma, danger on the roads... You name it, it got an airing.

The organisers followed a tried and trusted recipe, carefully blending the following ingredients: take one church hall full of angry residents; add a liberal sprinkling of ward councillors; lightly dust with a couple of traffic engineers. Welcome everybody to the meeting and refer briefly to how little the council has achieved since the last similar meeting in 1993 (and how much worse things have become outside your own front door). Then stand well back to enjoy much buzzing and fizzing.

Of course fun is to be had by all! One by one, the public can stand up and have a go at the traffic engineers. After all the solutions are all so simple aren't they? Surely anybody with half a brain can see what needs doing at these lights, or at that roundabout, or outside my son's school... Do these engineers just not care? Do they enjoy living up in their ivory towers, tinkering with traffic models while West Barnes burns? Do they actually live in the area themselves, do they know what it is like to be stuck in traffic half the time - and suffer traffic fumes and noise and danger outside their front door the other half?

I've had my hand up for some time now. But I have been to these meetings before. The Chair probably has a good idea of what I want to say. I suspect he doesn't like the message. He invites one of his neighbours to fire another volley into the engineers about the traffic lights at the end of his road.

And so it goes on. It's division of labour for the besieged engineers: one attempting to calmly and rationally address the points being flung; the other making copious notes of the half-baked, hare-brained traffic schemes being shouted up from the floor, promising to look into them when funding allows.

And there's the rub. Money. A bit more of the folding stuff spent on our roads and our traffic problems would disappear overnight! Simple! An attempted explanation of where the funds come from and how difficult they are to come by falls on deaf ears.

My arm is aching now. The meeting won't go on much longer, surely. Points are being repeated, the pressure is on, the engineers are hoarse. I am determined to get my oar in, I haven't just come along to enjoy the fireworks. Ah, here we go, he's looking my way, yes he caught my eye - I'm up like a shot before he passes me by.

My point is a very simple one. It is not addressed to the engineers though. It is addressed to the audience. I think that is why the chair didn't really want me to speak.

I begin by telling them how glad I am not to have to share in their problems. I will gladly share my secret with them: I don't own a car and go everywhere locally by bike. Oh joy! I can't remember the last time I got stuck in traffic. I dare to suggest that they too could help themselves, starting tomorrow. Rather than rely on the engineers and hope for government funding which may never come, why not just get out and walk, or bike? After all, they are traffic. If they got out of their cars from time to time, we would not have a problem.

The engineers could spend all the money they ever dreamed of. But as long as we all insist on driving everywhere - even the shortest distances - their schemes, however pricey, would still only scratch the surface of our traffic hell. 72% of all journeys are under five miles, half are less than two miles. The West Barnes area itself is no more than two miles across, many journeys within its boundaries could easily be made on foot or by bike - now there's a radical thought!

People begin to look uncomfortable, I'm not playing by the rules. Steady on! These would be lifestyle changes! We are here tonight to indulge in the time-honoured sport of giving the council's traffic engineers a good ear-bashing, not to consider changing our own personal habits. The Chair asks if I am coming to my question for the engineers... But we have it in our power, far more than do the engineers, to help ourselves.

I battle on - this is the only chance I will get tonight. It's a ten minute walk for me to take my kids to school, yet I know parents who live closer than that and insist on driving their kids into school every day. Of course, it is a fifteen minute drive, as they negotiate the peak-hour traffic, the level crossing, the battle for a parking place (legal or illegal, many do not care as they gaily abandon vehicles on zig-zag markings outside the school, or on the bus stop a bit further down). I am back home again before they have arrived, but they will not open their eyes to the idiocy of their habits. They will take no action, except, of course, whenever the occasion arises to blame someone else, like a traffic engineer...

My question, since I must conclude with at least one point addressed to the engineers, is this: now that the council has a statutory duty, under the Road Traffic Reduction Act, to draw up plans to cut road traffic levels by ten percent, will it consider reallocating road space in favour of bikes, pedestrians and buses along the road which I use to walk my daughter to school? Present arrangements on this particular road encourage driving: four lanes are allocated to parked and moving motor vehicles, while the pavements on each side are so narrow that parents with buggies have trouble getting past each other. There are no dedicated facilities for cyclists or buses whatsoever.

My points and question are noted, I am assured.

A ward councillor rises to ask if the council engineers have any big picture of where they want to go, any sort of long term strategy? Yes they have, but the explanation which begins to follow looks as if it could be a bit demanding on the audience and is drowned out by more whingeing about those traffic lights at the end of the Chair's road.

The big picture, I would like to lecture but do not get the chance, is that if we do not start to help ourselves by leaving our cars at home from time to time, global warming will ensure that we will all be under water in 50 years time.

The meeting wound up about ten o'clock. They all got into their cars and went home...