facebook.com/HRASouthampton highfieldracomms@gmail.com

Join /
Renew

Contact
Us

Extract from HRA E-news February 2025 – No 2. Portswood Broadway Bus-gate 4 weeks in!

Posted by on Mar 1, 2025 in News | 0 comments
The Portswood Broadway scheme Steering Group

The Steering Group (SG) was set up by the Council and held its first meeting in May 2024. So far there have been 4 meetings and the next one is scheduled for 26 March 2025. You can read all about the SG here: Portswood Project Steering Group

 

The terms of reference of the group are:

  • Provide advice to the Cabinet Member for Environment and Transport on the scope and impact of the trial of the Portswood Broadway Bus Gate
  • Receive information from Council Officers on technical aspects of the trial
  • To ensure an unbiased trial of the bus gate
  • To oversee the trial and the development of any ATZ (including monitoring the ATZ co-design workshops) within the budgetary limits as stated in the Cabinet report
  • To agree on monitoring criteria and measures of success and use them to advise on the achievement of the objectives of the scheme.

Members of the group represent different organisations, interested individuals or focus groups and are mostly drawn from the local area. Several members of HRA are on the Steering Group.

Since the start of the Trial, there has been some incorrect information about the role of the Steering Group circulating in the press and in official statements from Cabinet Members which it is important to clarify.

The SG did not co-design the Active Travel Zone (Brookvale Road and Russell Place), neither did the SG approve or guide the scheme. Balfour Beatty Living Places designed the ATZ and it was approved by Southampton City Council. The Steering Group holds no responsibility for those decisions, its role is to oversee.

 

ATZ Access Routes mapDuring the first week of the Trial an HRA member noticed that the official ‘Access routes by car’ map through the ATZ on the Council website included a private unadopted road. The member and the HRAHonSec contacted the Portswood Project Team several times until the error was understood and corrected. The map was reissued on the website without highlighting the private road.

February 2025 Committee Statement*

At a Committee-only discussion on 11 February 2025 the following statement was agreed:

On 11 February, the HRA Committee considered the Portswood Broadway Trial two weeks into implementation. Whilst initial problems might have been anticipated with the introduction of a scheme of this scale, the level of traffic disruption to local roads during Bus-gate hours had been unsustainable. Community data indicated greater traffic flow than had been forecast following the second round of consultations with a full-time Bus-gate. When the Bus-gate is closed to through traffic there had been fewer vehicles on Portswood Broadway and it had been quieter.

The Committee noted that the Bus-gate Project Team had not modelled the traffic effect of a peak-time only Bus-gate on surrounding residential roads.

Many safety incidents had been reported; safety for pedestrians and cyclists remained a serious concern. The Council had a responsibility to ensure a scheme they had designed and implemented was safe.

Road Safety Audits (July/Nov 2024) had identified problems in the Brookvale Road layout which the Council did not wholly implement but undertook to monitor and amend if necessary. A further Road Safety Audit, confirmed for w/b 24 February, was welcomed.

Other community feedback had highlighted that the project had launched with critical signage not in place, signage that had been misleading and route maps identifying Private Roads as an access route for vehicles.

It was recognised that the Council had been quick to respond to remove parking spaces on Brookvale Road that were causing blockages, to amend the Access Map and adjust traffic light timings on the Brookvale Road / Portswood Road junction.

The HRA Committee had a good oversight of the Key Performance Indicators and would monitor these over the coming weeks through the Steering Group. HRA will continue to collate feedback from members and the wider community.

HRA will continue to engage positively with the Project but remained unconvinced that the scheme would meet its objectives or the measures of success that had been identified so far.

Finally, HRA hoped that the Council would maintain an open mind on the future of the scheme while the trial continued, as a clearer picture of the scheme outcomes across all of the objectives became available and could be carefully analysed and considered.

Barbara Claridge HRAHonSec 12/02/25

*Prof. Roger Brown was not present for the discussion having declared an interest as the independent Chair of the Steering Group
Southampton Common, late February 2025. Photo by Ken
 

Live Traffic Data Brookvale RoadYou may have noticed a huge increase in the number of vehicles using Brookvale Road instead of Portswood Road during Bus-gate hours. HRA members are live-counting vehicles in both directions using a LiDar movement counter. The numbers are staggering. Brookvale live traffic data can be found here:

https://www.portswood-funnel.co.uk/
info@portswood-funnel.co.uk/

ePetition

There is now an ePetition running from 14/02/2025 to 28/03/2025 on Southampton City Council website asking for the Bus-gate to be halted in order to explore alternative solutions which manage through traffic effectively. This is an independent ePetition, not initiated by HRA. Almost 1000 signatures have been posted. SCC ePetition link

 

HRA Monitoring Reports

Details on how HRA members can help with monitoring the scheme will be sent out next week in a much shorter e-news. It is still early in the Trial and some objectives will not yet be in place e.g. better bus stops or increased biodiversity.

HRA members can send email comments and photos to:  HRA.HonSec@gmail.com. It is assumed that any information or image sent will have permission to share (anonymously) on our website. Can you help with the monitoring?

 

Please note:

Only photos sent direct to HRAHonSec / HRA Comms would be used

Permission to share publicly is assumed if sent

No photograph can be copied from any external, third-party source e.g. The Daily Echo

No malicious photographic material will be used

No photographic material or text from any political source would be used.

Barbara Claridge HRAHonSec

 
Bins in Westridge Road
 

Send general or safety comments, observations or complaints to: portswoodcorridor@southampton.gov.uk

Send comments concerned with the Experimental Traffic Orders (ETRO), changes which include the ATZ buildouts on Brookvale Road, signage, traffic filters on Russell Place, changes to parking, measures to improve safety and cycling and the Bus-gate restrictions on The Broadway to: ETRO Comments Page SCC

These comments will not be considered until after the 6-month trial but they will all count and you can comment more than once.

For further general information go to: Eastleigh to Southampton Portswood Project

if you require further information to allow you to submit a comment on these proposals please email: Southampton.Traffic.Management@balfourbeatty.com

Send comments, observations or complaints to the Cabinet Member for Transport, Councillor Eamon Keogh: Councillor.E.Keogh@southampton.gov.uk

This is how to contact the Portswood Ward Councillors:
Councillor John Savage: Councillor.j.savage@southampton.gov.uk
Councillor Marie Finn: Councillor.A.Finn@southampton.gov.uk
Councillor Katherine Barbour: Councillor.K.Barbour@southampton.gov.uk

Every comment will count.

HRA will take account of member comments in their monthly monitoring reports but will not pass on individual comments to the Officers or Councillors leading the scheme.
Sunrise over Crofton Close, Highfield, late February 2025. Photo by a HRA Member

 

Stop Press and good news!
Councillor John Savage and Councillor Marie Finn are to be thanked for pushing for a change in the speed limit on Church Lane which will be reduced from 30mph to a 20mph limit and be in line with the ATZ and Portswood Broadway. The change requires a Temporary Traffic Regulation Order (similar to a roadwork scheme) and as such does not need consultation time. This will be done as soon as Balfour Beatty can assign a resource. It will be carried out by the crew that is on reactive works, so as long as no urgent repairs come in over the weekend or early next week, it should be done.

Avenue St Andrew’s United Reformed Church, late February 2025. Photo by Barbara Claridge

 
Stop Press News – Just in from Southampton City Council!

Please see below an update on the Portswood Project from the Council:

“As part of the trial, the council is committed to listening to feedback from residents and businesses to help inform its outcomes. We appreciate local people’s efforts to highlight safety issues with the trial infrastructure to us, which has enabled us to focus on these areas.

After hearing from residents about the impact of the trial’s ‘give way’ priority build out features, the council commissioned an independent Road Safety Audit. The Audit was due to take place in the w/c 24 February 2025 but unfortunately, due to availability of the Audit team and Police, this has been postponed until w/c 10 March 2024. Due to the delay, some of the Audit team have attended Brookvale Road to provide some interim advice to the council on the ‘give way’ priority features.

They have advised us that the existing pinch points are suitably visible for road users but also noted issues with the new buildout on Brookvale Road between Winn Road and Blenheim Avenue (near the mini roundabout). The interim advice is that, although the risk of a head on collision is low, as the feature is not working as intended, consideration should be given to its removal after observing driving behaviour on site. This echoes feedback received from residents that has showed examples of road user behaviour that is not consistent with the ‘give way’ priority rule. As a result, we will remove the trial ‘give way’ priority build out at this location on the night of 5 March 2025.

The Road Safety Audit taking place in the w/c 10 March 2025 will take into account feedback received from the public and the issues raised in the discussions we have had with Highfield Church of England School in relation to road safety. We are also reducing the speed limit of Church Lane to 20mph to improve safety for children, parents and others walking, wheeling or cycling in the area.

I am aware that this is another change that has been made to the trial Portswood Project that has not had initial oversight from the Steering Group. Ideally the recommendation would have gone to you for oversight. However, given the timing of the next Steering Group meeting and the interim advice from the Audit team, the decision has been made, in consultation with the Cabinet Member for Environment & Transport, to remove the trial build out as soon as possible. I am hopeful that any future changes to the trial layout will be given enough time to allow tabling at the Steering Group in the future.

If you have any questions, please use the contact below. As always, we encourage local people to submit any feedback on the trial Portswood Project to the Experimental Traffic Regulation Order page here:
https://transport.southampton.gov.uk/tro-consultations/portswood-broadway/ “