The Piper House access gate to Blacka is situated on a bend in the Hathersage Road where there has been extensive highways work going on in the last few weeks.
Since a tragic accident last year when two young women were killed we have expected work to be carried out at this spot. There was a lot of dicussion on the dangers of that bend at the time. Regularly over many years cars have gone into the wall when drivers have misjudged the bend often at speed. Now the highways people have gone away and we can see what they have done.
Well the first thing that should be said is that they've spent a lot of money. But has it been spent on something that will make the bend safer? A lot of the work has been devoted to rebuilding the stone wall. The road has been resurfaced and the largish parking space opposite Blacka has been sealed off. Nothing has been done to realign the bend, no new speed restriction either mandatory or advisory is in evidence and nothing has been done to compensate for the access restrictions caused by the parking space being closed.
So what exactly has been the point? We now have a smart new wall, a new road surface and a line of reflecting posts on the footpath. Traffic will certainly revert to travelling at some speed after a period of calmness while the roadwork was going on. SWT's gate access to Blacka at this point has now been made unusable by the line of the new wall and very few people are likely to try to enter Blacka here in future.
You wonder sometimes. Does anybody actualy think before starting these projects?
No comments:
Post a Comment