Have your say on air quality plans for Devizes (From The Wiltshire Gazette and Herald)
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Have your say on air quality plans for Devizes
9:41am Tuesday 31st July 2012 in News
The new air quality management area could be extended to include London Road and the Hopton Industrial Estate
Residents and businesses in Devizes are being urged to have their say on how the council can help monitor and improve air quality in the town.
The council has identified that a few small areas in the town centre currently exceed the national expected standard of air pollution for nitrogen dioxide from vehicle exhausts.
To ensure this situation is monitored and tackled it is being proposed the existing ‘air quality management area’ is extended, as a start to producing an air quality action plan for the town.
Three potential options on which roads to include are now being put forward in a 12-week consultation and townspeople are invited to have their say.
Wiltshire Council’s cabinet member for public health and public protection, Keith Humphries, said: “We are very lucky that in Wiltshire the vast majority of the county’s air is extremely clean.
However, we do have very small pockets in some of our towns where the air quality does exceed the national standards and this is often caused by traffic congestion at narrow points in the road.
“To help combat this we create air quality management areas so we are continually monitoring the situation and then develop action plans with local people to try and improve it.
"We hope the people of Devizes take the chance to help influence how we can take forward our plans to improve the air quality in the relatively small areas of their town where it is higher than average.”
Devizes currently has one air quality management area which covers Shane’s Castle.
Five other areas have been identified which could potentially exceed national air quality standards: The Nursery, Northgate Street, St James Terrace, Southgate roundabout and Chantry Court/New Park Street.
It is estimated that between 200 and 400 adults live in these areas.
The council is considering three options for a new air quality management area:
• Option 1: Includes all those areas and slightly extend beyond them. There is potential in the future that these areas might have to be extended if other ‘hot spots’ are identified.
• Option 2: This includes all those areas and the centre of Devizes. This area is unlikely to be extended in the future as air pollution is not a concern outside of the town centre.
• Option 3: This would extend beyond the centre of Devizes to include London Road and Hopton Industrial Estate – areas that currently do not have any air pollution and are not expected to.
Wiltshire Council has a county-wide air quality strategy, which recognises the need to work with other agencies, local people and area boards to tackle air quality management.
There are seven areas in Wiltshire which have been designated as air quality management areas.
In Salisbury action plans for its air quality management areas have helped influence sustainable transport policies and seen the introduction of schemes like park and ride, which have helped reduce
air pollution in the city.
People can give their views on the Devizes air quality consultation by email to: rachel.kent@wiltshire.gov.uk, in writing to: Wiltshire Council, Public Protection Services, Rachel Kent, Devizes Air
Quality AQMA Consultation, County Hall, Bythesea Road, Trowbridge, Wiltshire, BA14 8JN or via the council’s website at www.wiltshire.gov.uk/council/consultations
Comments(12)
Don Jones
says...
11:18am Tue 31 Jul 12
Granti wrote:And would I be safe in guessing that you're not a rocket scientist?
stop the stupid 30 min parking rule in the Market place! People spend too much time driving around looking for another parking place. It's not rocket science!
Granti
says...
11:30am Tue 31 Jul 12
edwardeast
says...
11:51am Tue 31 Jul 12
The Shanes Castle problem was recognised in the days of Kennet District Council, so it is not a recent discovery. What has happened under Wiltshire Council is a continued housing construction programme, with a consequent increase in traffic and the spread of the air polution problem from one small part of Devizes to the whole of the central area.
Static traffic queues at peak times creates more pollution than steadily moving traffic. Because there is only one way through the medieval street pattern of Devizes at present, declaring ever larger air quality management zones, with or without public consultation, is another exercise in rearranging the deck chairs while Titanic sinks.
It is a classic example of the Council ignoring the elephant in the room (if that is not mixing metaphores). The only effective long term solution is to plan and build a system of relief roads to take traffic out of the town centre.
In the short term, Wiltshire Council must take effective action to enforce the proposals in its new Core Strategy,. It must put the development of the neglected infrastructure ahead of new dwellings and stick to the proposed limits on the numbers of new houses. There is a serious disconnection between the Trowbridge strategists and the local planning officers.
We have recently had planning approval given for retirement homes for wealthy retirees from other parts of the country at the Wharf and a similar proposal for Quakers Walk is under consideration. The latter was initially rejected by the Wiltshire Planning Committee but it decided not to fight the developer at an appeal. The appeal is now being contested by a consortium of volunteers from the Trust for Devizes, CPRE and DCAP. we will continue to try to protect local interests even if Wiltshire Council will not.
Ted East,
Chairman, the Trust for Devizes
Don Jones
says...
2:19pm Tue 31 Jul 12
When I was waiting for the bus on London Road yesterday I thought I’d do my own quick traffic survey – a quick count of cars (not lorries or vans) with no-one in them apart from the driver. Forty cars – only two carrying a passenger - before the bus arrived. Clearly we couldn’t extrapolate that figure with any degree of accuracy but I’d be surprised if more than 10% of cars t peak time carried more than one person. That seems unsustainable to me.
As you’ve said before, we need some proper data. I strongly suspect that a large number of journeys start or (maybe ‘and’?) finish in town. Once we’ve got the facts, perhaps we’ll know what to do.
Don Jones
says...
9:01am Wed 1 Aug 12
ace reporter
says...
1:48pm Wed 1 Aug 12
Don Jones
says...
2:12pm Wed 1 Aug 12
And to be fair to the 49, it's very rare that it's late leaving Devizes. Road works sometimes hold it up. The other delay - one which disrupts all of London Road - is traffic truning right off Windsor Drive. I'm always surprised that doesn't get more of a mention.
Daedalus
says...
9:20pm Wed 1 Aug 12
Seend Beer Festival it is always late!
edwardeast
says...
9:28pm Wed 1 Aug 12
Don Jones
says...
9:09am Thu 2 Aug 12
edwardeast wrote:Now now, Ted, there are some serious points in there. I still maintain that a lot of the problem is that there are simply too many 'unnecessary' car journeys. A lot of the proposal I've read are mainly dedicated to making it easier to use the sacred car. Even in talk about air quality the overall tone seems to be less about reducing car journeys and more about speeding them up.
How satisfying to have stirred such an intellectual debate.
Let's be honest, we all know people who regularly use their cars for journey of half a mile or less. I'm not talking about those who have mobility problems or people who would otherwise be lugging a lot of stuff around either. And many political and lobbying groups who are happy to be proscriptive on planning seems to be strangely libertarian when it comes to the car.
What might reduce car journeys a bit is if the garages started displaying prices per gallon again. I recon petrol in Devizes must be over £6 a gallon now. Thanks to successive Chancellors, that’s still cheaper than beer, mind.
edwardeast
says...
12:45pm Thu 2 Aug 12
Of course it would be a great help to reduce car journeys and some people (e.g. the DCAP Transport Group) are working hard to improve cycle routes and improve information on public transport, etc. They deserve our support.
Buses in and around smaller towns do not have the passenger density to make them economic and rely on subsidies, which is never a permanent solution. Buses work best in larger towns and cities.
Route 49 is a sucessful exception because it is a quick journey between town centres and it does not divert far off the most direct route. In comparison, route 2 to Salisbury is not so well used from Devizes because it diverts to too many villages and the journey time is about twice that by car.
The basic problem remains that the population of Devizes has grown beyond the capacity of its infrastructure, which includes road networks, employment opportunities, medical facilities, receational spaces, etc.
Very bad planning over decades has caused this situation to develop. Some of us are trying to prevent a continuation of bad planning, for example, by using the new planning legislation to create a Neighbourhood Plan, but it is a demanding task.
Granti says...
10:27am Tue 31 Jul 12
It's not rocket science!