Please can you spare five minutes of your time to respond to this consultation and help our community?
Cheshire East has published a consultation document on transport and parking but it may not surprise you to learn that scant, if any, attention is paid to those who live in rural communities.
The Parish Council considers it of the utmost importance to bring our concerns to the attention of Cheshire East. You can do this by responding to the questionnaire on line and/or sending in a letter or email expressing your views www.cheshireeast.gov.uk/LocalTransportEngagement We will only make an impact if a significant number take part – so over to you!
Points which you may like to consider:
- Extensive alterations to the road network in Knutsford are proposed along with mention of traffic calming and congestion. Our Neighbourhood Plan incorporates a Traffic Management Scheme for Over Peover designed to alleviate the extreme traffic pressure the village is under due to the presence of Radbroke Hall. All the information is available on the village website peoversuperiorandsnelson.org.uk under Neighbourhood Plan. We would like to bring our proposals to the attention of Cheshire East as an area much in need of traffic calming measures.
- People living in rural areas depend on cars because public transport is so bad. The bus service in Over Peover has deteriorated markedly over the years. Some people, even if a car is available, find it useful to take the bus, e.g. to hospital appointments where parking is extremely difficult however this is not convenient where the frequency is so low. If your appointment overruns you may be facing a 2 hour wait for the next bus, which is unacceptable. Some people do not have a choice. Rural bus services will only be used if the frequency is dramatically increased. Also bus service timetables and train timetables should be integrated to enable ease of transfer between the two.
- Trains: the train service in Knutsford is abysmal, running only once an hour and using ancient rolling stock. We need to push for an improvement here and also to the frequency of the train service at Chelford. One of the suggestions is to extend the Metrolink to Knutsford via the Tram/train technology. This would be of great benefit to residents.
- A round about at the junction of the A50 and Stocks Lane would ease bottlenecks getting out of the village at peak times and help to slow speeding traffic on the A50.
Please comment freely on the proposals and many thanks for taking the time to make your views heard.