This mini roundabout by Walkden Railway Station . (the one which cannot be modernised .. and will always preclude families with baby buggies and disabled family
We have this verbatim from "Friends of Walkden Station" .. which society Ju-Ju has been engaged with to glean some weapon to fight the congestion charge with
Jazz tries to "subvert" councillors
and one told her she had the calibre and fight to stand for office as an "Indy"
Claire has met Jazz.. but Ju-Ju got delayed at school that January evening. Oh well .. next time Claire passes through Manchester .. the folks there will take her to dinner and help sort out a decent bed for the night.
Anyway just for the history of this junction:
1. The only accidents are HIGH vehicles which get stuck under the low bridge. Now before folk criticise the lorry drivers.. take a look at the SECOND bridge here. This bridge holds the notorious record of de-roofing large vehicles and has done so since buses and truck came to be .. per the local "lore and legend" ,.. and proven by records.
2. The road was once a T junction. Most locals use another road ..cross the one way road beyond the bridge (the one which cyclists freewheel down illegally
towards the bridges ..
and then turn right and drive beneath the bridge on the other parallel one way.. which we understand came to be in 1966.
No accident occurred at the old T-junction or at the local short cuts.
Since the mini roundabout was installed.. a car collided with the book-keeper at the corner the same day.
There have been umpteen collisions .. with the last one being a fortnight ago.. involving a van .. a car and a shunt through steel barriers into the hairdresser's immediately opposite the white building where the bookmaker's is located
This last photo is taken from some distance to try to show the full lay-out. Jazz apologises for phot quality .. but she was on the way to some exam meeting at the time she paused to take the photo.
Anyway.. the point of this is a follow on from a thread in SPL .. but I wonder if folk can suggest why this mini-roundabout might be extremely "accident prone" ..given it replaced a rather difficult T junction when folk had to see traffic entering the two way system from beneath the bridge on the side on the bookmaker's side from a distance..
What would be a solution from an engineering point of view?
My family in Manchester think it has more to do with some lack of expertise on the part of some.. hesitations and a complete misinterpretation of intent... along with a fail to look properly.
Which covers about everything
By the way .. this junction has seen one seriously injured cyclist.
SO what is going wrong here? And what can Jazz.. Ju-Ju and Jonathan (and families) suggest when they write to the council's Highways planning bods to try to make it all a bit safer here..