Several years ago High Road in Loughton has had a makeover. Some new lampposts have been added, the road surface has been re-laid, new parking bays have been added instead of the old ones and several sets of traffic lights for pedestrians have been introduced. All this costed a lot of money and for what?
As a result, the traffic in the centre of Loughton now grinds to a halt during the peak hours. Outside of peak hours, it now takes twice as long to cross the town as took before the “improvements”.
You’re probably thinking of yourself crossing Loughton on the car. Please don’t - please think of all those poor pensioners and older people riding a bus instead. For those using buses 20, 167 and 250 it became a very serious problem because they don’t have any other choice.
The new now metered “easy parking” bays on the sides of Loughton High Road is interrupting the traffic flow. Earlier, the parking was on the parallel small strip of the road and it was perfect but now all cars and buses on the road have to wait for a car to park. If the road was wider, this would be less of a problem. But the road is narrow and this causes a huge problem for those travelling by High Road.
The new traffic lights for shoppers are now everywhere and the period of the green light for the road users is very small. What is the point to have traffic lights every 100 yards? So that shoppers would cross the road to glide from one shop to another? In the busy shopping times, the traffic now barely moves anyway because of the new parking spots, so wouldn’t it be easier for example just to add the traffic islands?
This also relates to the two traffic lights just yards from each other on Old Station Road near Sainsbury’s. Why are they there? It would be much better to add a traffic light for pedestrians walking from and to Loughton Underground Station in the place where they are crossing Alderton Hill near the roundabout because the majority of drivers don’t stop there to let people cross the road. This is a hazardous place and the problem of the road crossing here will need to be addressed at some point. Once I was travelling on the bus there with a group of young girls in front of me and one of them said: “The traffic lights are so close to each other, this is pathetic”. Sorry, council, this is pathetic indeed.
One would read all this and say ok, but Loughton High Road is mainly for those, who do shopping and not for those, who just wants to drive through. The people who drive through may use Alderton Hill and Wellfields - there are no traffic lights there (except for the speed bumps near the school on Alderton Hill). Fair enough - I myself sometimes drive there but notice I use the word “sometimes”. That is because the road surface on Alderton Hill is horrendous. The worst ever road surface I’ve ever encountered in Loughton is on Alderton Hill. It seems to me that the town chiefs have just forgotten about this road. They made people use it by bringing the set of traffic suffocating measures to High Road and - seems like in spite - decided not to do anything about the condition of an alternative route. So it’s either waste of time of the Loughton High Road or waste of your car on Alderton Hill. By the way, High Road is repaired fairy regularly. Probably a lot of council people live nearby.
There are only two positive moment I found in the Loughton High Road makeover. These are new brighter lights and a new pavement (although I can’t remember what was wrong with the old one and why it was necessary to replace it).
With the new Loughton traffic scheme the meters came to Loughton, probably to pay for the awfully designed project. How dare council take the money from people for such a disaster? Everyone I met and discussed this matter pointed to me that the High Road makeover was a disaster. It is a spit in the face of all Loughton residents and visitors. I just hope that the council will learn a lesson and the forthcoming Broadway makeover in Debden will be done with the common sense and for the people’s good.
The first thing is that the number of available parking spaces available on the Broadway itself will be reduced dramatically and this is a bad news. In 2008, the car parks on the North and on the South of Debden Broadway (Burton Road and Vere Road) have become chargeable. That was done under a good pretense to improve the parking availability and allow people who live nearby to park more easily. In reality, nothing has changed except that everyone except local residents now has to pay for parking during the working days and even on Saturdays (on the North of the Broadway).