FURIOUS residents have hit out at the lack of action to control the speed and volume of traffic using the A441 to Birmingham.
Villagers in Hopwood say the road, which carries huge numbers of vehicles to and from the M42, simply is not engineered for the growth in traffic and that their pleas for help have fallen on deaf ears at Worcestershire County Council.
“There’s already beeen a number of minor accidents on the road and sooner or later there is going to be a serious one,” said Councillor Andy Humphries, chairman of Alvechurch parish council under which Hopwood falls.
A roadside survey by the county council earlier this year recorded over 12,000 vehicles passing through the village over 24 hours with peaks of more than 3,500 vehicles between 6am and 9am and 3pm and 6pm – school time while a speed check found vehicles averaging 46.8mph in what is a 40mph zone.
“We have been pushing the county council to look seriously at this and to do a proper safety audit and publish it to both the parish council and the residents which they have not done,” said Coun Humphries.
The parish is calling for better and clearer road engineering, improvements to the footpath, provision for cyclists, a crossing or island to help pedestrians and a speed camera to slow traffic down.
He added that the parish council had raised the issue with their local MP, Business Secretary Sajid Javid, and he would shortly be making a site visit.
However June Griffiths, county councillor for the area, said the authority had already done everything the parish council had asked for and they were working to towards getting a mobile speed camera for the road.
“Everything they have asked for has been done and I’m sorry about the delay over speed enforcement but it’s not the fault of the county or the police and it’s certainly not my fault,” she said.
She added that a central refuge could put pedestrians in danger and that a survey had found that demand for such a crossing was low.
A spokeswoman for Police Safer Roads Partnership said: “We are committed to supporting communities through our community concern enforcement programme. As stated, we are very supportive of the concerns raised by Alvechurch Parish Council and we are due to start enforcing on the A441 with one of our mobile enforcement units as soon as we can.”
