Half awake early on a Friday morning, I was startled by an item on Radio Shropshire news. Repairs on Clun Bridge, I heard, will be completed in August during which month the historic bridge will be lifted on hydraulic jacks. I groaned. “Another road closure destined to hit the town’s trade yet again!” But as I crept into consciousness I realised how silly the news item was. Clun Bridge, jacked into the air? An exchange of emails with BBC Shropshire elicited a response from a humbled reporter. “Yeah… someone got the story wrong. Wrong bridge, wrong town… Please accept my apologies on behalf of whoever it was who's made me sound so silly on air.”
Clun Bridge is often at the centre of controversy. The only difference the contentious splaying of the bridge has made is to allow drivers to approach it at higher speed before they hit it. But the new diversion signs and some pretty hideous painted lines on Bridge Street do seem to be helping HGVs avoid and cope with the bridge. But are there more trucks using Clun Bridge since the widening? In its questionnaire to Clun residents in late 2005, the County Council promised the situation would be monitored:
“Question: Will the County Council monitor future traffic flows at Clun Bridge? Answer. Yes. A seven-day traffic count was undertaken on Bridge Street between 1 and 8 July 2005. This will be used as a base to compare with future counts.”
But the Council recently told me that no future traffic surveys for Clun are planned. So we may never know whether the widening was worth the cost to tax payers, the loss of trade to businesses and the damage to a historic bridge.
The tide is turning against building our way out of traffic problems and intelligent use of the existing road network is gaining ground. Satellite navigation ought to be intelligent but it is often blamed for the 44 tonne trucks that jam up the Market Square and wedge themselves across the bridge. The government’s plans for improving sat nav are stuck in the slow lane but fortunately others are racing ahead. The Ordnance Survey, for example, is updating the map data it supplies to sat nav manufacturers to highlight designated freight routes and roads for HGVs to avoid. The bad news is that the EU is eyeing up proposals to allow double trailer 60 tonne lorries (LHVs) on the roads. The government has rejected the idea but it has a poor track record on resisting Euro-creep.
There are some who dream of a Clun bypass. It’s a naive fantasy that would wreak havoc with the setting of the town and consume essential floodplain. And what is the justification? Traffic problems in Clun? Nonsense! The worst we suffer is a few minutes delay here and there in a town on the way to nowhere in particular.
The next time a truck gets stuck in Clun, don’t fret. Get out the deckchairs. Sit down and enjoy the spectacle. Clun is not in a hurry. We should leave rushing to people elsewhere in England. But even in the hectic South East many people are now realising that they are bypassing real life rather than enjoying the journey. Let’s not hurry to join them and learn to be comfortable with the traffic our historic town suffers from time to time.Andy Boddington
Published in the Clun Chronicle, July 2008