No new entrance for Shrewsbury's Meole Brace Retail Park
The owners of Meole Brace Retail Park in Shrewsbury are taking action to reduce traffic gridlock at the site – but have stopped short of creating a new entrance.
As part of plans to build a new Sports Direct shop, the site’s owners will remove speed bumps and introduce a new two-way, entrance and exit off the roundabout for Next and Boots.
An extra lane is also being added to the Hereford Lane exit to the park.
Earlier this year Shropshire Council’s Highways Department called for a new entrance to the site to cut down on the traffic jams caused by people trying to get in and out of the park.
Mark Wooton, Shropshire Council’s north & central manager for developing highways, wrote to authority’s planning department to over concerns that the traffic problems at the retail park would reduce the benefits created by the multi-million pound changes to Meole Brace’s ‘hamburger’ roundabout.
Mr Wooton said the mitigation measures planned as part of the development did not address the congestion issues at the park and that a secondary access or exit “should be considered in the longer term”.
The site for the new Sports Direct shop is on land that has been suggested as the only way of creating a second entrance to the park, and relieving the queues for shoppers visiting or leaving at busy times.
The concerns about the traffic impact could lead planning officials to reject the proposal for the new store, which would also stop Outfit from opening on the park, in the building currently occupied by Sports Direct.
In an effort to sway planning officials Phil Wooliscroft of Croft Transport Solutions, on behalf of the park’s owners, La Salle, has suggested two new measures.
Two large speed bumps will be removed to speed up traffic, and an access on the roundabout closest to the M&S store will have its current one-way access changed to a two-way entrance.
One of the speed bumps removed - near to McDonald’s - also includes a zebra crossing which will be taken away.
A report from Croft Transport Solutions states: “One additional benefit of the removal of one of the ‘zebra’ crossings is to make the flow of traffic more efficient into and out of the retail park as it removes a traffic calming feature that currently slows traffic down to an unnecessarily slow level.
“To increase the efficiency of flow along the main access road the speed hump close to the Marks and Spencer service area is also to be removed.
“On site observations have confirmed that the speed of vehicles across this section of the main access road is unnecessarily slowed down with the existing four speed control measures. The removal of two of these will improve the flow of vehicles into and out of the retail park. A further improvement to the flow of vehicles into the site will be the creation of two lanes on the northern approach to the second internal roundabout close to the Marks and Spencer service area.
It remains to be seen whether the measures will be enough to persuade planning officials to approve the plans.
