Southend Council, incompetent or just corrupt?

[Fred_Bear]

Southend traffic lights, you have to laugh! by Fred_Bear, on Flickr

 

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Southend traffic lights, you have to laugh!

 

After a year of constant congestion in Southend and long hold ups for emergency vehicles just to change a perfectly functioning Victoria Circus roundabout into a complete balls up of a traffic light junction (see photo above) the council says the following regarding traffic lights. If it was not true people would say it is made up, how could a council be so incompetent, or so eager to give work to contractor friends.

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Evening Echo, 10th March 2011.

 

TRAFFIC lights could be removed from some Southend roads as part of £8.3million plans to overhaul the town’s transport network.

 

Southend Council is lining up a bid for Government cash to cut congestion and encourage greener travelling.

 

Transport chiefs believe reducing the number of traffic lights would help to smooth the stop-start nature of travelling through the borough.

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[morcheen]

not invented roundabouts down there yet then

[Fred_Bear]

not invented roundabouts down there yet then

 

There were roundabouts there for years that worked perfectly well, so the only reason I can think of for the change to traffic lights was a certain amount of brown envelopes passing around. And now the plan is that traffic lights slow up traffic so get rid of them, and these junctions have not even been finished off yet. In the same way big business decides central government policy local business controls local council policy. Jobs on the board, your house double glazed etc as a favour, holidays in villas abroad, that is the currency of policy decisions, not local needs.