Angry residents have been complaining to East Chesterton’s Labour City Councillor, Gerri Bird, that a £285,000 road scheme in Fen Road.has made antisocial driving there worse.  The scheme was put in by Cambridgeshire County Council and was said to be for traffic calming, cycling and walking improvements but residents claim that the speed of cars has actually increased.

Councillor Gerri Bird said: “Fen Road has a long and well documented history of antisocial driving at speed down from Water Street and over the railway crossing. The original speed bumps were so far apart that in some cases drivers simply went between them and in others they mounted the pavement to avoid them. I have been working with residents since 2010 to sort this problem and stopping the anti social driving was a major factor in the new scheme. We understood that the replacement speed humps were going to be across the entire road with bollards on the pavement to stop vehicles mounting the pavement, but instead the County Council have just put in small speed cushions. 

I have been inundated with calls from residents in Fen Road this week to say that the new speed cushions can just be driven over at speed by cars and vans and if anything, the situation has been made worse.  I have been down there myself and it is clear residents are right. I have tried to find out what is going on at the County Council but so far all I have been told is that if further measures are needed more money will have to be found.  We need urgent answers to what has gone wrong and what will be done to sort the problem.”

Kelley Green, who attended December’s North Area Committee to ask for reassurance that the scheme would address anti social driving, said: “It cannot be right to spend almost £300,000 on a scheme and fail to stop the dangerous driving which residents have suffered for years. Residents deserve answers as to why the scheme has failed.  Fen Road is a key route to the new station for cyclists and pedestrians as well and they shouldn’t be put at risk because the County Council has got this wrong.”