Medway Council plans to improve traffic flow by blocking road
Plus new B&M causes traffic chaos, a new discount store for Rainham, news in brief, and more
If you were trying to improve a regularly congested junction, you might not think the best way would be to block the road with buses, but that’s presumably why you aren’t a traffic planner at Medway1. We have details on a somewhat baffling set of junction ‘improvements’ below. Further down, we have news of the chaos that B&M brought to the Horsted area when it opened over the weekend, a new discount retailer opening in Rainham (it’s not another B&M, at least), news in brief, and more.
Medway Council plans to improve traffic flow by blocking the road
A modest redesign of a relatively insignificant road junction is something we’d usually spend a great deal of time on as a publication. Still, Medway Council’s proposals this week to improve the point where the A2 and Mierscourt Road in Rainham meet have raised more than one eyebrow this week.
The junction on the east side of Rainham is well-used, with a significant volume of east-west traffic on the A2 meeting traffic flows from the south on Mierscourt Road, which serves as the main access route towards Parkwood and a number of new-build estates in the area.
The issue with the junction is essentially one of size, with there only being just about space for the east and west A2 traffic and no real room for vehicles waiting to turn into Mierscourt Road from the eastbound carriageway. As a result, traffic inevitably builds up at the junction. For all of Medway Council’s supposed efforts to relieve congestion with a red route through the town centre, there is not much you can do to keep traffic flowing if it literally has nowhere to go.
As such, Medway Council launched a consultation this week for a series of changes to the junction intended to ‘increase capacity’ and ‘improve traffic flows’ at the junction. The only problem with this is that it seems difficult to see how the proposals will achieve either aim. Oh, and the consultation about it appears to be something of a sham anyway.
The plans themselves are relatively straightforward, which is hardly surprising given the junction is in a constrained urban area with no real room to expand the carriageway, which would be the logical solution if space and money were no object. But they are, and it is, so we have a small series of interventions like removing two traffic islands and scrubbing out some white lines. The latter is supposed to ‘provide a wider facility overall,’ but it is unclear how paint removal in itself achieves this. Ironically, the primary intervention that seems useful doesn’t benefit vehicles at all, but instead, a pedestrian link will be created between the bus stop at the bottom of Mierscourt Road and the A2, something that should have been in place years ago.
Perhaps the strangest move for a scheme supposed to ‘increase capacity’ and ‘improve traffic flow’ though is the filling in of a bus stop to the east of the junction. This change will see the bus stop moved to the running lane of the A2, and while we’re no traffic experts, buses stopping on the live lane of a busy road hardly seems to be a recipe for moving vehicles through more efficiently.
As things stand, only 11 buses each day use this bus stop, so this might be a rare case of Medway’s lack of a functioning bus network coming in handy. If the new estates to the east of Rainham or, in some utopian world, Sittingbourne ever receive a regular bus service from our towns, the junction could be clogged rather more regularly.
We asked Medway Council whether any assessment of the changes were carried out ahead of the consultation and what the logic of relocating the bus stop onto the main carriageway was, but no response was received ahead of publication. We also asked how much budget had been set aside for this works, but we received no response on that either.
We also asked about the consultation itself. Council consultations are often accused of being tickbox exercises where the decision is already made, and the process is just a formality. It is understandable why when the consultation is as pointless as this. Residents have until 30 June to offer any feedback on the proposed designs, but given Medway Council granted themselves a permit to carry out the work on 3 April, it seems unlikely that any public contributions will make any difference to the process.
New B&M opens, immediately causes traffic chaos
Speaking of unpleasant traffic buildup, Medway’s latest B&M opened on Saturday (6 Jun) and immediately crippled the surrounding road network.
The new store, located in the former Homebase unit at Horsted Retail Park, is the largest store the chain has in Medway, and customers, eager for a new retail experience, heading there in their droves rather than visit an existing B&M in Chatham, Strood, Gillingham, or Rainham.
Over the weekend, local Facebook groups were roughly equally mixed between posts reviewing the new store (‘well-stocked,’ ‘there’s no lift,’ ‘it’s a B&M’), posts complaining that it was taking half an hour to traffic from the Bridgewood roundabout to B&M, and posts asking if B&M was quiet enough to visit yet.
Concerns had been raised ahead of the store opening given that the roundabout outside Horsted Retail Park and the car park inside had struggled for capacity since Aldi and Home Bargains moved in. While Homebase had done little to make the area busy, B&M, as the residents of Rainham learned last year, seems to attract the crowds.
Some social media posts by those disgruntled about sitting in traffic caused mainly by those waiting to visit the discount retailer, asked why the store was allowed to open as the consequences seemed inevitable. The fun planning system answer to that question is that there is nothing that could really be done to stop it. The existing building for Homebase was designated for retail, so a new retailer moving in, even if they are more popular, doesn’t require any additional consent. This is perhaps for the best, lest residents begin waging wars against shops they don’t like, but it does mean some consequences like this are inevitable.
Hopefully, the initial B&M excitement will calm down in the coming weeks, and the retail park will return to a more normal level of use because, if not, journeys between Medway and Maidstone will take an awful lot longer from now on.
Have a Medway story you think we might be interested in? Get in touch via hello(at)localauthority(dot)news - We’re always happy to talk off the record in the first instance…
Rainham bags another bargain.. store
Speaking of discount retailers, another one is moving into Rainham Shopping Centre, following the recent arrivals of B&M and Poundland. This time, the discounts come from the mundanely named Bargain Warehouse. The small chain is known for selling bulk packs of soft drinks and packaged groceries that are close to or just past their best-before dates and is set to open in the unit previously occupied by Jhoots pharmacy, or Lloyds if you’re a bit older. It will be the third Bargain Warehouse in Kent, adding to their stores in Folkestone and Ashford.
The new arrival comes at a time when Rainham’s retail offer seems to lean ever more heavily on the promise of bargains. Bargain Warehouse pitches itself as a solution to food waste and rising prices, offering everything from soft drinks to cleaning products at a fraction of the cost found elsewhere. There’s a clear market for this kind of operation, so for some, the appeal is obvious. For others, it may feel like another sign of how local shopping centres have changed.
The company claims the new Rainham store will create a dozen jobs, and, of course, an empty unit being filled by something is positive for a town centre that is struggling. At a time when other businesses are packing up and leaving, any new addition is welcome, but questions will remain about how viable a town centre focused almost entirely on discount retailers can really be.
In brief
🐦 The Guardian came for a wander around the woods at Lodge Hill following reports last week that the government’s Planning and Infrastructure Bill would make the site more vulnerable to development.
🏗️ Medway Council have approved 319 flats on the former Go Outdoors and Market Hall site in Chatham. Five blocks of up to seven storeys will be built alongside new commercial units and improvements to the public realm. At the same meeting, 181 new homes were approved for a former quarry in Frindsbury.
🍔 McDonald’s at Chatham Dockside will open earlier than initially planned. The outlet, the eighth the company has Medway, will open on July 23.
🌊 The Pentagon in Chatham had to close on Sunday (8 Jun) due to flooding. This happens more often than is ideal, but that tends to be the risk of building your shopping centre on top of a river.
🧑💻 There’s a good job opportunity at the Rochester Bridge Trust, which is seeking a Communications Manager. You can find out more about the role and how to apply here.
⚽ Gillingham Football Club have announced that MEMS will return as their front shirt sponsor for the coming season. The move follows two seasons where Bauvil took the position.
🐸 Thousands of toadlets are currently besieging Capstone Country Park. It’s been a strong year for toad mating apparently, so thousands of the tiny amphibians are now emerging from the lake.
More Authority
We've had some great responses to our interview with Dalia Halpern-Matthews, Chair of Trustees at Chatham Memorial Synagogue. She talks about her family’s long involvement with the synagogue, the vandalism that has plagued it, Israel, and lots more.
"It's really important for people to see that we're just the same as everybody else"
Dr Dalia Halpern-Matthews is the former Chief Executive of the Halpern Trust, where she helped to set up Nucleus Arts. Steven met her at the Chatham Memorial Synagogue, where she is the Chair of Trustees. They discussed her family’s long involvement with the synagogue, the vandalism that has plagued it, Israel, and lots more. During the interview, Steven learnt something about himself and left the Synagogue a changed man…
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