Moor End Road - County Council to Try Again

Now that the new Highways contracting arrangements for Hertfordshire are underway, the County Council is to try again with the Moor End Road Bus Lane in Hemel Hempstead.

County Councillor for Tring and The Villages, Liberal Democrat Nick Hollinghurst, said "Last week I was shown a simplified scheme that is being worked up by the new design team, Opus Arup. It looks much more sensible than the original poor design."

The bus lane was put into place to eliminate traffic jams which were delaying buses to Tring, Berkhamsted and Chesham. However the first scheme was complicated, with signs in the wrong places, pointing the wrong way and obscured by other signs in front of them. Such was the resulting confusion that 35,000 motorists were fined within 6 months and a Traffic Penalty Tribunal ordered refunds at a loss to Hertfordshire of £1.3million.

Despite all this, Executive Member for Highways, Conservative Councillor Stewart Pile has always refused to accept that the Council were at fault in any way.

Councillor Hollinghurst added, "The first scheme failed because of poor design and even worse implementation - at a huge cost to the council tax payers. Let's hope that the Council can get it right this time!"