Beggars Lane, Tring - Safety Improvements Nearly Complete

After nearly six years of designs, redesigns, schemes introduced, schemes withdrawn, protests, objections, sabotage (at one point) and legal obstructions, the Beggars Lane Safety Improvements are nearly complete.

There were several issues - parking for leisure use of the Ridgeway Path and the canal, parking when the station car park is full and to avoid the charges, safety for cyclists, safety for people walking down the outside of a line of cars from a parking spot higher up the lane, access for commercial vehicles, obstruction of drivers' views around a corner and sheer obstruction at the narrower part of the lane.

All these issues, plus the requirement to keep the highway safe and unobstructed for all users, had to be balanced against each other in a reasonable manner. Consultation responses had to be answered, legal objections dealt with by solicitors and Freedom of Information requests complied with.

The cost of the yellow paint is trivial - but the several consultations, the legal orders that had to be raised (and then sometimes cancelled) and the defence against legal objections have been very expensive over the years.

But at last the yellow lines are down and the work very nearly finished. So what's still missing? Well.., I reckon we could get another 5 - 6 offroad parking spaces put in the year after next and then, well, that will be the best we can do.

I note, however, that people are parking offroad on the verge where there are no grasscrete parking stands. Please do not do that because in the absence of official offroad spaces and a supporting Traffic Regulation Order you are very likely to get a penalty ticket.

Normally a double yellow line prohibits all parking at any time not only on the road but also on the verge as far as highway land stretches.

Finally, please be assured that I am continuing my almost continous campaign to get the bus services extended later into the evening and made more frequent during the day. However, since this is one of the most heavilly subsidised bus routes in the county, and since this subsidy has to be paid for by HCC it is difficult, bearing in mind their responsibilities to adult care, learning disability, children in care and social services and public health generally.

I think the community should once again be getting some funding from Dacorum Borough Council, who also used to contribute to the subsidised bus services - but suddenly decided 8 years ago that they could no longer be asked!