Hinckley Road Street Carpet

Just a few days to go now until the Stoke Golding Street Party. Hinckley Road will be closed from 11:00 - 16:00 and we are hoping for a fine day and lots of people.

We are planning to construct a sawdust street carpet across the road just by Thornfield Road. This is a natural crossing place for children visiting the "rec". We wanted to mock up a crossing to create a talking point for our Streets4All initiative, but we also wanted a fun activity for children to help construct on the day. The idea for a sawdust street carpet came from sawdust street carpets that are constructed for holy week in some South American countries have a look here. Our proposed design is somewhat less elaborate, but there again we will only have a few hours to work on it.

Its proved difficult to work out how to construct a sawdust street carpet, but I have found a source of cheap sawdust and been experimenting. The flag will have to be done freehand, then we have tile templates which we can move around to construct the main area filling in "grout lines" as we go. We have cardboard templates for diamonds, crowns, queens head and footprints that children should be able to help with. I have used simple poster paints to dye the sawdust with mixed results - the lighter colours do not work too well and the the blue is rather green. Here is a bit of a test with the union flag - pretty pleased really.

I am hoping for a dry windless day although I have sprayers and watering can to damp it all down. Could all be a disaster, we can but try though. Watch this space to see how it all worked out.

Convent Corner Safety Audit

Well the safety audit has been carried out now and Mar City have tweaked the design but this I'm afraid has done little to allay concerns about safety. The key concern remains the proposed crossing which has poor visibility from the north side looking towards Dadlington.

Inexplicably the audit was not taken during morning on afternoon school start / end times and consequently reported "low vehicle flows / speeds (based upon the site visit)". Anybody who has visited at morning or evening rush hours knows this is anything but the case. Surely at least the safety auditors would have access to traffic flow information.

Some safety issues were identified in the report and in response Mar City are proposing the following modifications to the design:
1) There are now 'build outs'/ deflections incorporated into the roundabout. (this is just white paint on the road surface)
2) The roundabout is domed, to force deflection around the roundabout, which slows vehicles.
3) There is now a 'build out'/ tightened junction on the exit from the development, which will slow traffic exiting the site.(again this is just painted)
4) Beige anti-skid surfaces have been incorporated into the approaches.
5) Thermoplastic rumble strips have been incorporated, on the antiskid surface, approaching from Dadlington (this was not called for in the report)

The school have written to Highways expressing their ongoing concerns.