Strathbungo Traffic (and what to do about it)

Well, 17 of you responded to the traffic survey over the past couple of weeks so thanks to everyone who gave a bit of their time to get back to us.

With the roads in Strathbungo in such a shocking state since the start of the winter it was no great surprise that all but two respondents thought that road resurfacing would be a jolly good idea.

Over half the respondents (9) thought we should cut our hedges to give pedestrians a little more space, while just under half though that we should have the Twenty’s plenty voluntary traffic calming scheme. Four people thought speed humps were a good idea while two thought that the council should upgrade the traffic signage in Strathbungo.

Loads of people had various comments also. One person thought that the Twenty’s Plenty scheme wouldn’t work saying that they felt that vehicles didn’t speed much anyway.

Rat running was a concern to a couple of people with the suggestion that various entrances and exits to the back lanes be blocked off to deter non-residents who would get lost in the labyrinth. Now one comment I thought was very good idea was for commercial vehicles to park elsewhere. The roads are narrow enough as it is with cars parked on both sides let alone vans. One needs to have a pretty good spacial sense to avoid clipping wing mirrors sometimes. And for some reason they always manage to park opposite each other at the most narrow point in the road. Why is that?

Someone thought that permitting parking only on one side would help matters. Not entirely sure where vehicles on the other side should park mind. Darnley Road? It’s certainly wide enough though we might need to re-install the old pedestrian bridge around the end of Marywood Square to give residents better access to their cars. Might also be a car thief’s dream come true – lots of nice cars and not an owner within earshot!

Painting the road to delineate parking spaces was someone’s suggestion.

My favourite however was the suggestion to have both vehicles and pedestrians use the road and have signage to indicate as much. I love the idea of pedestrianising the whole of Strathbungo eliminating both pavements and road and have everyone use the same space with lines to suggest where people should park. We all continually jump from the road to the pavement and back anyway a cars come by. Why not make it official? Cars would then be forced to go slower as they would effectively be driving on the pavement and pedestrians wouldn’t have to continually jump from road to pavement and zigzag between parked cars to avoid on-coming traffic.

I see that in the past couple of days the council has come round and filled in the holes in most of the roads in Strathbungo, but to be honest I would be prepared to wager a tidy sum that it won’t last! Filling holes does the job in the short term but come the next big rain it just takes a thimbleful of water to get under the newly laid tarmac for the next car to force it out in any direction save the one it came in through.