Longstanton says to Oakington: Get Stuffed!

On September 14th, Longstanton District Councillor Alex Riley asked his email list of Longstanton residents to vote on whether to fully open the road between Oakington and Longstanton or to keep it closed to normal traffic.

He asked that the vote take the form of the recipients relying with one of two words: "open" and "closed".
He didn't give any real argument either way, no facts, no resources, he just asked for people to express their opinion.

Well a follow-up email came out yesterday with the results. I'll quote the email at the end of this article, but I feel the headlines are:

• Longstanton is a village of some 2000 odd residences
• His list has 280 addresses
• 142 people replied
  122 voting to open the road
  20 to close it

It was only in this email that he gave any real information about the road, namely he linked to the Oakington & Westwick Parish Council (O&WPC) open letter on the matter. Ironically it's that letter that states:

1. Oakington residents were polled by their local news letter in 2008 and overwhelmingly voted to close the road
2. Longstanton Parish Council (LCP) have told O&WPC that they will be very unlikely to ever support (financially or otherwise) doing anything to help close the road.

As I understand it, Cllr Riley is a former Longstanton Parish Councillor. I do not know if he was a Councillor at the time LPC communicated this message to O&WPC.

To me, the interesting point seems to be that the residents of Longstanton care so little for the well-being of the Oakington residents, their neighbours, that they're happy to break the law on a minute-by-minute basis, just to save a few minutes on their journey, all of this, against the overwhelming public opinion of the residents of Oakington against having their village remain a small speed-bump on a rat-run to / from Cambridge.

I can't help think there's a kind of NIMBYism here. You see, Longstanton has a by-pass. A shiny new no doubt multi-million pound by-pass that traffic from the villages to the West of Longstanton can use to get to the A14. Longstanton used to be a rat-run but isn't any more. But Oakington still is a rat-run, oh yes. But that doesn't matter, because Longstanton isn't and so I (says the Longstanton resident) don't care. Ya boo sucks to the residents of Oakington, I've got a by-pass and I'm all right!

Lastly I'll mention his second observation: namely that cyclists have "*vigorously* accosted" him and that cyclists complain about aggressive driving.

Cllr Riley: I am one of the cyclists in question and when I spoke to you on this matter I definitely feel I did not accost you. I did, however, beg you and beg you to help rescue me from the homicidal criminals that break the law every hour of every day in your constituency. Also, the driving is almost inconsequential in comparison to the violence of the scum-bags who get out of their cars and threaten me with death for having had the insane temerity to move rightwards on the road (to avoid a huge pot-hole) when they are (illegally) driving past me! I here-within accuse you of being an apologist for the violent. Shame on you.

As promised, here's the letter in full. Cllr Riley writes:

I was taken aback by the scale of response to my last email about the Airfield Road.  My village email list contains about 280 local residents and half of you have taken the trouble to respond.  The voting so far is:

Open the road: 122 votes

Close the road: 20 votes

This is only a straw poll, and not every person in the village was consulted.  But the conclusion is inevitable.  If you know others who might not yet have voted, by all means suggest that they do.  All it takes is the one word Open or Closed to be sent to myself.

I sifted out any who in error voted twice and I classed any who said “Yes” as wanting it open and those who said “No” as wanting it closed (there were actually 2 of each).

A number of you sent me reasoned arguments in favour of your position.  I haven’t replied to any of these, but I have read them all carefully.  Some made the point that the one word answer hardly sufficed.  I see what they mean, but the way our democracy works is via the sledgehammer approach of a simple vote one way or the other.

If you CTRL-click on the following, you will find quite a lot of interesting information:

http://www.oakingtonandwestwickparishcouncil.org.uk/archive/longstanton-road.html

From this it emerges that our own Parish Council undertook in late 2008 to distribute a questionnaire round the whole village.  I hope this will happen shortly.  I gather that the police have indicated that they do not intend to continue actively policing the road until the affected communities have been consulted.

I happen to live on St Michael’s and it was delightfully peaceful when the road was being resurfaced and there was no traffic at all.  But I see my responsibility as being to represent the views of the whole of the village.

I would like to list some of the points that have been made about this whole issue:

1.       Oakington residents (which probably means those living in Longstanton Road, Oakington) have historically been opposed to the road being open, whereas Longstanton residents have in general been more in favour.

2.       According to the police, the main complainants this time around were cyclists – and certainly I have been very “vigorously” accosted on this matter by a couple of cyclists.  They claim that drivers on the airfield drive aggressively so far as cyclists are concerned.  There is no excuse for aggressive driving but the fact that one is breaking the law just by being on the Airfield road might actually encourage recklessness.

3.       St Michael’s and Woodside contain a number of houses which are very close to the road and for them heavy and speeding traffic are a nuisance, a hazard, and even damaging to their properties.  One of the great ironies of the present restrictions is that fully-laden double-decker buses can quite legally use the airfield road.

4.       There is a lot of speeding takes place down St Michael’s / Woodside and this would potentially get much worse if the road were opened up to all traffic.  Some of you suggested traffic calming measures.  The kind of priority system we already have on entering the village via School Lane might help, but speed bumps are generally reckoned to cause much more damage to neighbouring properties than no speed bumps.  Maybe the tendency to speed would reduce if using the airfield road were not itself illegal.

5.       Several responders made the point that even if those in other parts of the village wish to use the road, those in Woodside and St Michael’s would be resolutely opposed.  Well, based on the poll results so far, that’s not the case.  There actually seems to be a slender majority of those living on these two roads in favour of the airfield road being opened.

6.       It would not solve the problem to close the road and to back this up with either a gate (to which all local farmers, taxi drivers and emergency services had keys) or rising bollards (ditto).  This would be very expensive (how would you power the bollards?) and regrettably very open to vandalism (e.g. gates welded shut) owing to its remote location.  Vandalism could have fatal consequences if an emergency vehicle were prevented from driving across.

7.       Last, but not least, I have always taken a fairly relaxed view about all this because when (no, not if) Northstowe actually happens, the plans are for the road to be totally closed because the main access road to Northstowe, a dual carriageway, will cut straight across the airfield road.  Pedestrian and cycle access will be maintained, but it is hard to see that a flyover across the dual carriageway, capable of taking all road traffic, could be afforded.

If anyone feels I have failed to make significant points, please let me know and I’ll make them another time.  In the mean time, please vote if you wish to and have not yet done so.

Regards

Alex