Can we hope for any improvement in the 8:30 to 9:00 traffic nightmare on Wheatfield Drive? As ever, this is caused by the school drop, not the new, much-disputed building development.
The traffic calming squeezes serve only to make the situation more dangerous. On school days, a steady stream of traffic enters the street, creating virtual gridlock. Those dropping off their kids frequently park on the street for a considerable time. The upshot of this is that we who live there have to negotiate a nightmare obstacle course in order to get to work.
A simple, low-cost suggestion, short of removing the traffic calming, would be to introduce give-way priority in the traffic calming for cars EXITING the street towards the roundabout on Brook Way.
Ideally, the parents and school would organise a drop off and walk to school scheme operating from, say, the ALDI car park.
Apparently theres already a scheme for cars to only drive IN TO Wheatfield (so exit through Dewfalls) when dropping off and picking up kids for the school. A friends Dad was shouted at by a Mum (dropping of her child!) when he was exiting Wheatfield at the time, accusing him of dropping off his child and driving the ‘Wrong way’ out of Wheatfield, thing is his children are now around 20 as am I, and he was just leaving for work. She was angrily telling him about the One-Way rule that “everyone should know!”, i’ve lived in Wheatfield for nearly 10 years i’d never heard about that rule and i don’t think anyone else has either!
My children attend the school, it is not a public road rule just a request made by the school in the news letters to help the congestion in Wheatfield Drive. This is also along with not parking on the yellow zig zags outside, blocking residents drive ways and not parking within the school gates to allow people with Disabled Badges to be able to park….but sadly these are all frequently ignored.
The school does it best to hilight all of the above..but at the end of the day it is down the person driving the car!
They do encourage bike it and walking but again parents are normally hurrying of to work so tend to drive more.