Traffic congestion at Harrison Way, St Ives

Motorists are continuing to be inconvenienced by delays at the Harrison Road traffic lights.  Every time a guided bus crosses  or a pedestrian over the Harrison Road traffic is stopped. This maybe a minor inconvenience at normal times, but a rush hour, it is causing tailbacks.

The Hunts Post picks this theme up ( 15 February, page 5). A survey was carried out on behalf of St Ives Town Council. On 25 January, between 7 and 9 am , 2200 cars passed along Harrison Road, while the traffic lights went to red 64 times - that's 23 minutes in total. Councillor Colin Saunderson carried out his own informal survey on 16 January and reposted that the majority of crossings were made by pedestrians. His solution is to penalise the pedestrian - make us wait longer.

Another solution  (not mentioned in the newspaper report) would be to run all service A buses to/from St Ives Bus Station and that way cut down on the number of pedestrians crossing Harrison Way.

On a personal note, for my morning commute I can catch the A from the Bus Station, so walking across Harrison Way to the Park & Ride is unnecessary. On my evening commute, however, the A terminates the  Park & Ride, so, unless a B happens to be coming along just then (it doesn't usually), I have to walk the last quarter mile into town. There can often be about 10 other passengers making the same walk, and that often results in not one change of the lights , but two or three, as people don't all alight from the bus at the same moment, and they then walk to the pedestrian crossing at different speeds.

The planners need to put themselves in the mindset, not just of motorists, but of people like me who use the buses.