Correspondance from Claire Hoskins
Interim Strategic Transport Planning Manager
Planning and Economic Regeneration (June 2016)
Petition to install traffic lights in Cherry Burton at junction of Main St and Malton Road
Dear Councillor Pollard
Thank you for the information regarding the petition requesting traffic signals at the Cherry Burton crossroads on the B1248, which has been passed to me to respond to. I thought it would be useful to give you some background on the issues and options for this site so you can feed back to the Parish Council if required.
The possible installation of traffic signals at this junction has been considered on several occasions in the past and we continually monitor the collision record of the site. In 2010 the Council commissioned an independent report on the feasibility of introducing traffic signals at this location and, whilst there were some potential benefits for vehicles making turning movements from the side roads, there was also a potential significant negative impact on traffic on the B1248. In addition, the B1248 would need to be significantly re-engineered to reduce overall speeds to allow a signal controlled junction to operate safely. Simply lowering the speed limit would not be enough and major works would be required.
The safety of the junction was reviewed last year and a scheme involving resurfacing and remarking was introduced. The results are still being monitored.
Following your request, the Council’s Road Safety team has again reviewed the safety record of the junction, looking at the long term collision history in detail. This review shows that approximately half of the collisions involve drivers pulling out of the minor roads and half involve traffic on the major road, either turning across oncoming traffic or rear end shunts into stationary vehicles waiting to turn. Introducing traffic signals on a road where the speeds are too high for them to operate safely would almost certainly increase the likelihood of the main road collisions and would therefore fail to deliver an overall improvement in safety. On balance, the introduction of traffic signals at this location may actually make the road safety record worse.
Signals would potentially remove the conflict between traffic on the minor roads and the major road and could ease the egress from Cherry Burton and Leconfield but to guarantee the separation of all turning manoeuvres would require each leg to be signalled independently, reducing capacity and creating congestion and queuing. In turn this would lead to a greater risk of shunt type collisions on the junction approaches. The cost of installing traffic signals would be at least £0.25m, with the additional costs of re-engineering the approaches resulting in a total scheme cost likely to be in the region of £0.5m.
Officers annually review all sites on our highway network with a high risk of collision and look to introduce effective remedial measures where resources permit. We will continue to monitor the Cherry Burton crossroads and explore options for improving the road safety record at the junction as appropriate.
Please let me know if you would like to discuss this in more detail.