Plans aim to ease traffic issues following survey

Alderney's General Service committee met on 1 November to discuss issues raised by the public

Plans to deal with traffic issues in Alderney identified in a recent public survey have been announced.

The General Services Committee (GSC) has announced short, medium and long-term plans to tackle issues around parking, the number and size of vehicles and abandoned vehicles.

Out of 267 responses to the survey, almost three-quarters of respondents were concerned about an increase in larger vehicles and more than half were concerned about issues caused by abandoned vehicles.

The committee said figures from the survey showed some households that owned more than one car used public roads for parking, which was causing congestion in residential areas.

Short-term plan

• Identifying areas for improved road markings and signage

• Trial pedestrianisation of the lower end of Victoria Street on four Saturday mornings in December

• Police to continue to work to educate the public on how traffic and parking mistakes can be resolved with a better understanding of the consequences

• A proposed Active Travel to Work campaign to include messages such as Walk to Work Day and Cycle to Work Week to discourage vehicle usage and town parking

• Liaise with Alderney’s new planning officer to review parking space allocation at new developments

• A review following recent requests for more disabled parking spaces to be considered by the committee

Speed checks

In the medium-term the GSC agreed to look at ways of addressing the problem of abandoned vehicles.

It also agreed to work with police to carry out speed checks in areas with speed limits under 35mph (56 km/h) with this data being used to inform decisions on installing physical deterrents to speeding.

Its longer-term plan includes considered a permit parking system for residents in order to distinguish between residents and shoppers where there was a mix of homes and businesses in St Anne.

The permit system would limit parking in some areas of town areas to 28 days, and any vehicle that stayed longer would be considered abandoned.

The committee noted importing large private vehicles was being discouraged by the Policy and Finance Committee with fees and would be eventually further discouraged with new laws.