Working hard to improve our streets.

We’ve just launched an R4U survey to get residents’ views on how Saffron Walden’s streets can be improved to help residents – see >>HERE! I’ve been spending a couple of hours each week over the last few weeks walking round with a local highways engineer trying to develop ideas for what we can do. At the moment, much of what we are looking at is how pedestrians and cyclists can be helped without affecting drivers, and there are so many things that can be done – and honestly should have been done years ago.

This Friday we were looking at the junctions immediately to the north and east of the town centre, particularly the Castle St / Little Walden Road, Church St / Common Hill and Chaters Hill junctions. So many people use these routes and yet there are no safe crossings – five minutes standing at the Common Hill roundabout as a number of elderly people in mobility scooters and parents with pushchairs braved their way across was pretty frightening.

There are lots of small things that would make a huge difference; even things as basic as making sure that the dropped kerbs on either side of streets face each other, or building out the kerbs a little to remove sharp drops.

We are putting together a list of the improvements we’d like to see, and will post it for residents’ views, but really need your input to make a real difference to local residents.