By Grace Maxted
WITH AROUND 160,000 vehicles per day travelling to and from Canterbury along its main routes, the city centre is often heavily congested. The roads become gridlocked during the school and work rush hours and are also busier during college and university term times.
Sturry Road, Broad Street and Lower and Upper Bridge Street are some of the busiest and most congested areas in Canterbury with traffic queues sometimes taking hours to clear.
Unlocking the Gridlock is the name of the Canterbury District Transport Action Plan. The plan has progressively been aiming to improve the city’s roads for residents, students, shoppers and employees driving in for work.
Some of the intentions are to introduce more traffic management schemes, improve the perception of public transport and to extend the proved popular Park and Ride service.
Over eight million people have used the Park and Ride service in the 12years it has been open, which has reduced the traffic going into the city centre.
Helen Jarrett, full-time employee at Fenwick, uses the Park and Ride service daily, she said: “The service makes getting to work so much quicker and easier. As the park and ride bus can use the designated bus lanes, it passes all the traffic that I would be sitting in if I decided to park in the centre. It’s also a lot cheaper to do Park and Ride as parking for the whole day in the multi-storey can be up to about £10 whereas the whole day in the Park and Ride car park is only £2.50.”
Walking and other public transport is also being encouraged to people coming into the city, especially school pupils as the school hours are one of the busiest times for traffic. Twice as many school children are driven to school now compared to 20 years ago with an estimate of one in five cars in the morning being on ‘the school run’.
However many people like the use of their car and refuse to use the public services that are provided. Because of this, the Unlocking the Gridlock plan also intends to provide more slip roads at junctions to improve and quicken traffic flow.
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