By Cllr Pauline Jorgensen
When we were in control of Wokingham Borough Council, the Conservatives made it a real priority to tackle traffic congestion.
Over the years, including when I was in charge of Highways and Transport, I’ve had people arguing that we should focus entirely on walking, cycling and public transport and drive people out of cars by constraining road infrastructure.
I would reply to these people firstly by pointing out that, as someone who loves to cycle, I know why alternative transport is important, and that’s why we have invested in new footpaths and cyclepaths.
There is also a more important point.
Removing congestion from our roads is not just a matter of convenience, not everyone has a choice and in our busy lives people have to juggle travelling to work, getting young children to school and lots of other activities in what is a constrained time availability.
It’s endlessly frustrating to be stuck in a traffic jam, knowing that you’re late to pick up your children from school, or you’re going to miss that appointment, or there’s a cool drink waiting for you at home once you’re out of the summer heat.
But it’s also about improving the quality of the air we breathe.
Lines of stationary cars with engines running emit harmful fumes in our town and village centres, outside schools and in residential areas.
Ultimately, we understood that we needed to have different measures to tackle different aspects of getting around. When we were in office, we put this principle into practice.
We began to implement an Intelligent Traffic System, using data, smart sensors and new technologies to help traffic flow better around the Borough.
By the time the new coalition administration took over, we had installed traffic signal optimisation at 77% of sites, communications network CCTV at 86% of sites, and were 85% complete on works to roll out a driver information strategy.
Alongside this, we created a £124million programme to add 7.7 miles of new roads. This was designed to create more space and more routes for drivers to use, rather than funnelling everybody into the middle of towns and villages.
At the same time, we were delivering around 12.5 miles of cyclepaths and footpaths, with plans to add another 37 miles over the next 10 years.
We were delivering three new park & ride sites, and provided funding during the pandemic to keep bus services going until passenger numbers could recover.
We didn’t leave a funding gap for bus services – instead Reading Buses have come forward asking for more money since the coalition took control.
We had a wide-ranging programme in place to ease traffic congestion, and we are calling on the new coalition administration to continue the work that we had underway.
As an Opposition, we will look carefully at new proposals from the administration and we will support those that we think are right.
Most importantly, the Conservative approach has been and will be built on a fundamental principle of choice – providing you with the options to travel in a different way if you can, rather than forcing you out of your car.
Cllr Pauline Jorgensen is the leader of the opposition and Conservative member for Hillside
