More "Safe Street" proposals in Marple centre

[CTCREP]

I regret to say, although I would like to use the Middlewood Way and the Alan Newton Way for cycling, until the surface is suitable for commutiers who would be willing to cycle to work instead of using their cars, I too will carry on using my car.

 It should be possible to cycle commute between Manchester, Stockport, Macclesfield and Manchester Airport, but Stockport Council is the muddy sledehammer in the works.   Does anyone know if the link from the Middlewood Way to the A6 MARR is now open and suitable for commuting cyclists, and similarly is the bridge from the Alan Newton Way into Vernon Park now open.

[rsh]

Safe routes for cycling into Stockport from Marple and High Lane, separate from pedestrians and cars, are so desperately needed, it’s truly woeful that the council continue to ignore this problem and hope it’ll just go away.

Meanwhile, while we wait out their inaction, it would be nice if Marple could at least get a few thousand from the council to resurface the Alan Newton Way into Stockport or the canal towpath out to the High Peak, so that either are actually usable after rain. These aren’t big jobs compared to the amount of road resurfacing that’s done each year. It’s no wonder the roads become choked with cars when the choice for cycling is a deadly road or relentless mud.

[andy+kirsty]

Hi Jim,

This isn't helpful - I don't really want more speedbumps but with out constructive dialogue with council officers via our councillors we'll end up in the self defeating cycle of speedbumps or nothing, nothing isn't an option, so speedbumps it is, but we don't want speedbumps.

I think you mentioned chicanes, narrowing, speed restrictions etc. I've suggested Zebra crossings, junction tables and shared space. Perhaps we ought to start a new thread with what we want to see - from the starting point that the status quo isn't viable. We can then use this to build a plan for Marpe and see how much of that 15 million our councillors will bagsy for us.

As I have said time and time again, if you drive out of Marple in the morning better walking and cycling provision will improve your journey as it'll remove some of the traffic. Pre-covid I was that traffic a couple of days a week, I want to use this time and opportunity to do something constructive that means I don't spend several hours each week crawling down Stockport Road. This could be improving rotes so I and other can cycle or take out a dozen cars that are dropping off at Marple Hall.

[jimblob]

https://www.manchestereveningnews.co.uk/news/greater-manchester-news/16m-cycling-funding-greater-manchester-19270278

Mpre speed humps no doubt

[barndoor]

As an almost lifelong resident of Marple, the areas where speeding has been most evident over the years has been

• along Windlehurst
• along Hibbert Lane from the Mill down to the Buxton Lane junction
• Stockport road between Dan Bank and Rose Hill station
• Church Lane from Littlewoods up to Ridge Road.

Funny you should mention 'Church Lane from Littlewoods up to Ridge Road', Howard; I witnessed some pretty atrocious driving near the Conservative Club just a couple of Fridays ago. A car driver - travelling well over the speed limit - evidently hadn't realised the car in front had stopped to let a utility van join the traffic; and had he not been able to stop in time (which he just about managed to do, amid a screeching of tyres and smoke) he would have been into the back of it. The really scary thing is that a couple were on the pavement between the Con Club and the stopped car and, fearful of being hit, felt obliged to jump out of the way. Not only that but 20 minutes later I saw the same car, this time on Stockport Road, and the driver was on his phone looking at Facebook! A white J-reg Toyota MR2, if anyone's interested - I'd advise people to stay clear of it.

[andy+kirsty]

There is a free version - the data is all in the public domain - https://www.roadcrash.co.uk/map

To be fair the reporting information isn't great and we don't know if speed played a factor. The question will be whether the collision could have been avoided if the cars were travelling at a slower speed.

[jimblob]

Looking at that map, I would say that the majority of those accidents seem to be around junctions where collisions tend to happen way more often. Mostly due to people not checking around them before moving off or being impatient.

As an almost lifelong resident of Marple, the areas where speeding has been most evident over the years has been

• along Windlehurst
• along Hibbert Lane from the Mill down to the Buxton Lane junction
• Stockport road between Dan Bank and Rose Hill station
• Church Lane from Littlewoods up to Ridge Road.

The only area where that has diminished, in my experience has been along Windlehurst where the speedbumps have been most aggressive.

it's worth buying some credits for crashmap so you can see more detail and which accidents are as a result of speeding (I have).... it's not many!

[Howard]

Looking at that map, I would say that the majority of those accidents seem to be around junctions where collisions tend to happen way more often. Mostly due to people not checking around them before moving off or being impatient.

As an almost lifelong resident of Marple, the areas where speeding has been most evident over the years has been

• along Windlehurst
• along Hibbert Lane from the Mill down to the Buxton Lane junction
• Stockport road between Dan Bank and Rose Hill station
• Church Lane from Littlewoods up to Ridge Road.

The only area where that has diminished, in my experience has been along Windlehurst where the speedbumps have been most aggressive. The ones on Hibbert Lane are useless as on most cars you can straddle them or drive between them without even feeling the bump.

[andy+kirsty]

It's certainly turned into an interesting thread, not least because I finally agree with BoJo on something.

I think for the purposes of this topic the traffic / crash map is the most interesting part. You can clearly see a correlation between accidents and where council officers have tried to implement traffic calming measures. I don't agree with them all, but you can appreciate that they have responded to an issue.

I think we seem to have some consensus or a majority for doing *something* but not on what that should be.

I personally would like to see the District Centre a place where cars and pedestrians have equal priority, and that all routes to our local schools have zebra crossings so people have priority over cars at junctions. There seems to be a significant peak in accidents around our local Primary schools or the crossings nearby, surely we should be focusing some efforts here too.

[jimblob]

No one is saying Marple isn't a safe place both from a crime AND a traffic perspective!
It's highly unlikely people make stuff up just for the sake of posting something on social media
what some people are saying though is that they'd rather see fewer speed humps!

[andrewbowden]

I accept your points Andrew Bowden and I'm afraid I don't know Adam either, but am similarly sceptical when information on the internet from seemingly reliable sources becomes trusted simply because it is well presented but has had significant time and effort applied to it's presentation.
some samples from my "sources" below, they could be fabricated/exaggerated of course but are still sources nontheless!
I'm concious also that this thread has gone way offtrack and was about speed humps, my true passion

Okay, let's go through this. 

Firstly something important to say - to everyone.  Screenshots are dead easy to fake.  It took me 30 seconds to mock up a Twitter post where Boris Johnson is congratulating Mr Chips on being the best chippy in Marple.  It's that easy.  I took me far longer trying to work out how to actually include the image in this post...

Unfortunately though, businesses assuming everyone has Facebook - and therefore not making their posts public to all - makes it hard for me to find canonical sources of information for one simple reason - I don't have a Facebook account. 

Anyway I will assume they are all true.  The Works - we have a first hand account.  Okay.  So there may have been a crime.  But the Bargain Booze reference?  Well who is the person who posted that?  Are they reliable?  Do they work for Bargain Booze?  Were they there?  Or was it heresay?  Was it someone bored just making up rumours for the sake of it?  People do you know.

So I'm going to repeat this.  And I'm going to put it in very big letters.

MARPLE IS A SAFE PLACE

This is NOT a hotbed a crime.  Yes there is crime.  There's crime everywhere.  There's crime in the Shetland Islands.

Seriously.

We can sit here panicking, worrying our heads of, being absolutely petrified about crime.  That we're about to be stabbed, robbed, beaten to a pulp.  That our houses our about to be ransacked.  Murdered in our beds. 

As I said, I used to live in a part of London where there were 80 recorded crimes a month.  I didn't live in fear of crime then.  And I'm certainly not going to do so now.

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[barndoor]

A couple of posters have suggested they'd like to see road accident data. Luckily this data is available, in map form, at this address: https://www.crashmap.co.uk/

Click on the 'Map' option and a map will appear. For some reason the default extent is the area around Ambleside, but just type Marple into the Location box towards the bottom-right and press Enter. The pins show where an accident between 2015-2019 has been recorded; and you can fiddle around with the settings to show data as far back as 1999.

bd
 

[jimblob]

no one should never believe what they read on the internet,unless there is a source for that information

I accept your points Andrew Bowden and I'm afraid I don't know Adam either, but am similarly sceptical when information on the internet from seemingly reliable sources becomes trusted simply because it is well presented but has had significant time and effort applied to it's presentation.
some samples from my "sources" below, they could be fabricated/exaggerated of course but are still sources nontheless!
I'm concious also that this thread has gone way offtrack and was about speed humps, my true passion


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[andrewbowden]

I tend to believe what I see and hear first hand rather than headline statistics. If you're happy that a Marple outlet is robbed at knifepoint but because it doesn't show immediately in a statistic somewhere then you'll clearly sleep soundly in your bed tonight Wheels

Now let's be honest here.  No sensible person one will ever be happy for a business to be a victim of crime.  And to suggest someone would be, is not nice.

But personally the only source I have that Bargain Booze was robbed is you jimblob.  I am not saying it didn't happen. But I am saying I cannot currently corroborate your assertion that this crime took place.  If someone can produce a reliable source of information that matches what you say, then that will back you up.  Right now, I do not have that corroboration.

Why is this important?  Because I don't know you from Adam.  I have never met you.   I don't know anything about you.  To me personally you currently sit in the bucket of "random person I know of from the internet".  I don't know where your information comes from.  I don't know you.

So I don't automatically believe what you are saying because no one should never believe what they read on the internet,unless there is a source for that information

To take a simple example, I can say right now my hair is blonde. 

How do you know that is true?  If you have met me, you will know the answer.  But if you haven't? Is it blonde?  Is it red?  Is it very?  Have I even got hair?  How do you know?  Where is the evidence?

That's a silly example (my hair is actually green).  But sometimes these things are bigger.  Rumours and disinformation happen all the time.  They can stoke fear and mistrust. Sometimes unsubstantiated rumours can be spread with the best intentions.  Sometimes for the worst.

So I will not make an apology for not looking at the local crime stats and concluding that one reported crime a month in three police areas does not make this a hotbed of crime.  And from looking at them and concluding that suddenly going from very little crime over 12 months to loads in just a few weeks seems a little unlikely.

If the data at my fingertips changes and my conclusion turns out to be wrong, then I will be wrong.  But right now i do not have that information.

I don't want to offend by labelling you jimblob as unreliable.  You may be a very reliable source of information.  But I don't know that you are.

[jimblob]

I just don't get why people get so furious about getting caught speeding. You did it. You could have not done it. Suck it up.

I don't speed so not a problem; if I do, which has happened twice in 35 years of driving, I've graciously accepted the consequences and become a wiser and safer driver because of it. I object though to having my car wrecked by speed bumps and the environment and roadspace being blighted with speed humps.