Transport - We hope you like traffic jams!

If you ask most people in our area to name the local issue that causes them the most problems on a day-to-day basis, then the chances are it will be something to do with transport.

Leighton Buzzard and Linslade both suffer appalling traffic congestion on a pretty much daily basis. It can take 45 minutes to drive from one side of the town to the other. There are few alternative routes. This affects all of us - people trying to get across the town to the station, people trying to get into the town to do shopping, people just trying to get about.

Even if you go by bus, you end up being stuck in the same traffic jam. And if you walk or cycle, you’re mostly forced into using the same routes as everyone else, which in turn brings its own dangers.

HGVs currently have free rein through most of the town, even where roads are effectively single track because of parking limitations - just ask the residents of Vandyke Road about that. And the few HGV restrictions that are in place are rarely enforced.

We all cram into a local road system that is utterly beyond its capacity to cope. Even with the Leston Road/West Street/Leighton Road through route devised in the 1970s, the road network in the centre of the town is basically a product of the evolution of the town over hundreds of years, and is utterly overwhelmed by the traffic volumes that the 21st century has brought.

Outside of Leighton Buzzard, traffic is also a problem for the villages, with “rat-running” being common as people try to find routes that avoid congested main roads.

Parking is a huge issue for many people. Whether it’s parking for shopping, for the station, for Tiddenfoot Leisure Centre, or just trying to park near our homes, it’s a problem that we all encounter on a daily basis. The combination of congestion and parking problems are a significant factor in deterring people from using the town centre.

And it’s not just roads and traffic. Although huge improvements have been made in the local rail services, it’s begun approaching the absolute physical limits of its capacity. Silverlink trains recently stated that, on current growth, capacity on the routes in and out of London would be exceeded by 2020. That doesn’t take into account the extra demand that will inevitably accompany further mass housing development.

Our local transport infrastructure is already strained to breaking point - in fact, many people would say that the situation is already beyond this.

Mass housing developments such as the 6000 homes proposed by Arnold White/Willis Dawson will bring thousands more people and cars onto local roads. Although new roads will be built within the new development itself, the rest of the road network will be essentially unchanged. If we can’t currently all fit into this road network, what are our chances when the traffic from 6000 new homes hits the road?

Thousands more people will also be looking to use the trains. As mentioned earlier, Silverlink have stated that there is limited future capacity for expanding train services to deal with increasing demand. The only solution would be complete replacement of the existing route, something that is so expensive that it is quite patently not going to happen within the timescales of the proposed housing developments . In the meantime, commuters can look forward to more and more overcrowding and service disruption as the capacity of the line is reached and then exceeded.

So, if you think road and rail journeys are hard work today….just wait until the developers get their way.