Traffic Order report due in February 2021

A report with a “definitive time-scale” for the implementation of an experimental traffic order for Stornoway’s Assaye Place will now come before the next meeting of Comhairle nan Eilean Siar’s Transport and Infrastructure Committee in February, after councillors rejected a proposal to delay the introduction of the scheme until later in the new year.
Assaye PlaceAssaye Place
Assaye Place

A report before the committee at its meeting on Wednesday had contained a recommendation to delay the introduction of the 8-month long scheme amid concerns that with traffic levels still suppressed in the wake of the Covid-19 pandemic, assessments of the impact of the scheme along with other traffic control measures planned for the town, might not reflect the real, longer-term situation when traffic may have returned to more normal levels.

A report on the issue also confirmed that objections had been raised to the introduction of the control measures during public consultations.

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Safety concerns about the road being used as a ‘rat-run’, especially at times when traffic from the near-by Lews Castle College at lunchtimes and in the early evening is at its peak, had prompted the move to introduce the controls.

At the meeting, local councillor Gordon Murray said that he “didn’t know where objections” to the plan were “coming from”, and said that local residents, along with the residents’ association and the local Community Council wanted the measures to be introduced and said that the traffic order was “a trial” and should now be tried.

A senior Comhairle officer said that the proposal recommended in the report was not for an indefinite delay to introducing the scheme but a move to wait until traffic levels were normalised and the impact of the order could be properly assessed.

But, councillors backed a proposal that a report on implementation of the order with a time-scale for its introduction should come before the next committee meeting. Cllr Murray confirmed he was happy with that proposal than the original recommendation.

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