22,000 vehicles a day, every day – that’s what Bordesley residents say they are facing – that an a seven fold increase in HGVs using the A441 Birmingham Road past their homes.
The volume is so bad their County Councillor Aled Luckman says even the police have dubbed the road too unsafe to do speed checks.
HGV drivers often use the road as a cut through to the M42 instead of taking the A435 dual carriageway.
Now fed-up local have launched their own campaign group ‘Bordesley Breathes’ in an attempt to bring their plight to the attention of the powers that be.
“It’s dreadful – there’s so much traffic it’s getting impossible to cross the road – and no one is listening to us,” said Bordesley Breathes chair Karen Kilbride.
And the situation is likely to get worse too.
There’s the new housing development off Weights Lane – likely to go on for years – and proposals for a further development by the Abbey Golf Course.
The volume of traffic is so great the A441 / Dagnell End Road traffic lights can’t cope and will have to be upgraded, causing more hold-ups.
And this will be compounded by what campaigners say will be five months of roadworks as Severn Trent lays new water pipes through the village.
Karen added that when the traffic queues ease they then have to deal with speeding cars, despite the dangers of the adverse camber of the A441 through the village.
“We are a community here and we’re being torn apart by traffic,” she said.
The campaigners have joined with residents in Hither Green Lane and the North Redditch Community Alliance to further press their call for changes at Worcestershire County Council, the local highways authority where yesterday, Thursday, May 19, they presented a petition calling for help.
Coun Luckman (Con, Alvechurch) who is supporting the residents said: “The plight of Bordesley residents has been ignored for too long.
“I have been pushing their case and I think it’s time they got something back from the Weights Lane development.”
He added he was hopeful that, with Councillor Mike Rouse (Con, Redditch South) now holding the highways portfolio at County Hall, things might finally be changing.
“The short and sweet of it is that the road should be made 30mph because that way HGVs will not want to use it,” he said.
