Turning a residential road in to cul-de-sac. Advice please.

Does anybody have experience of the best way to go about applying for a residential road to be permanently closed to vehicles at one end and made effectively in to a cul-de-sac, with continued pedestrian/cycle access and maybe an emergency gate?

I know that this kind of thing has been popular in a few UK cities over the last two years, notably in London where.

The road in question runs parallel to the main one way system in a town centre. Traffic often queues on the one way system, and the road in question is often used to try and save a few seconds by people in the queue. The same traffic light system controls (via induction loop sensors) the exit of the one way system and the residential road on to a larger road. Those using the residential road may individually save time, but the overall system is limited by junctions capacity, so everyone else loses.

The residential road is already signed a “Access Only”, so in reality the short cut people should not be using it as a cut through.

Additionally the residential road is very tight, with street parking on both sides and only enough width for one vehicle. Vehicles must often wait at the ends of the roads if passing is required.

The road is also one of the main pedestrian routes to-from-between the town centre, supermarket, schools and one side of the town, as it is much more pleasant to walk along than the busy one way system. There is a constant stream of pedestrians all day and night walking in the road (as the footpath is quite narrow) and it gives the road a really pleasant ‘shared use’ feel. That is until someone tries hooning down the road to try and save themselves queuing.

Resident drivers tend to be very respectful of the pedestrian users, and travel at a suitable speed, to allow the road to be used as mixed use.

Anyway, the bit of road that would be good to be closed permanently is currently blocked with temporary road works. Various residents WhatsApp groups and conversations result in most (however not quite all) people agreeing that the minor inconvenience of the road closure is worth it for the reduction in transiting traffic and increase in pedestrian safety.

Any idea how we would take this forward? Roads are a County Council issue, so I have sent a speculative email to them, but it would be great to know what to expect from any process so that we can prepare any response and best represent our request. Is it worth forming a ‘Residents Association’ type organisation, or just raise the request as an individual and let the council do the canvassing/consulting?

Access issues for turning, refuse, delivery and emergency vehicles should be solvable with a few minor changes to parking layouts, but I imagine this is the sort of thing the council will consider in any consultation.

Thanks all.

I’m guessing you don’t live in London otherwise you might already have heard of LTNs.

Have a look up of low traffic neighbourhood measures, LTNs. What you describe sounds exactly like one of those.
Much frothing of mouth and vein bulging rage on twitter about them but I voice my support to local councillor.

Not sure of the formal process but I get getting contact with councillor and proposing it collectively

Yes, I know about LTNs, and want to achieve similar, but I can’t find much on the process of how a resident can propose one and pitch it that isn’t specific to the local authority/governance structure in London with Boroughs/TFL involvement.

Find your local councillor’s surgery (might be virtual just now). Make an appointment – go see them. Explain concerns, suggest a solution. Have you got local gov elections in May? this is a good time for getting councillors to be seen to be doing things…

a resident

A resident or all / most of you?

The other option (depending on the junction design) could be to make it one-way in the wrong direction, could be cheaper than changing the kerbs and pavements, unless the cul-de-sac would be simply be via some plastic bollards or big planters and paint, but that would look a bit ‘temporary’.

The residential road is already signed a “Access Only”, so in reality the short cut people should not be using it as a cut through.

It seems that they are aware of the problem and possibly agree with your assertion that overall everyone loses. Just that they have taken a really half arsed way of trying to fix it, that crucially a satnav especially one with live traffic data is going to ignore.

Also part of me questions a sign on a public highway that is factually incorrect. “unsuitable for through traffic” or similar would make pedantic me happy

Yes, I know about LTNs, and want to achieve similar, but I can’t find much on the process of how a resident can propose one and pitch it that isn’t specific to the local authority/governance structure in London with Boroughs/TFL involvement.

Experimental Traffic Regulation Order.
There are 3 types of TRO: Permanent, Temporary and Experimental
First is used on (eg) new housing site or new supermarket where it joins an existing road or where a junction gets remodelled.
Temporary is used for roadworks etc and is for a defined period of time (eg “this road will be closed for one week due to gas main works”)
Experimental is used for implementing LTNs – you run the road closure / filtering alongside a statutory consultation and assess the results based on a combination of the consultation responses and the data (so you might have traffic counts, pollution index, RTA statistics etc to monitor before and after).

Councillors don’t like traffic stuff at the best of times, especially not restricting it. They like to open new roads, they hate the storm of negative feedback from anything that might be deemed an imposition on the Divine Rights of Motorists. Wanting it filtered because it’s nice for you, the residents, isn’t necessarily the best approach – I’d go in with wanting it filtered due to safety concerns, pollution, accidents due to cars pulling out around parked vehicles etc.

That said, it does tie in with climate emergency stuff – most councils seem to have declared one but then do very little about actually implementing anything.

Councillor, get them to site, get a group together to meet them that way it’s not just one person moaning.

As above, get your local councillor involved and wider community representation. Depending on how your local authority is constructed, try and find out who the cabinet member or lead elected member is on transport and highway matters and write to them.

And don’t expect anything to happen at pace, this is local government after all.

A resident or all / most of you?

That’s what I am trying to figure out. If at this early stage most residents agree that it is a good idea, is there any real advantage to forming a ‘body’ just to nominate/suggest the issue to the Council?

If the first step is just to nominate/raise the issue then ultimately the decision to do/not do it will be made by the council on evidence/representations that they have collected. If there are compelling reasons to do/not do it then surely they will come out during any consultation in the form of a Letter of Representation, rather than in a heated ‘residents committee meeting’ or similar which will have no real impact on the Council made decision but will probably cause friction on the street.

The other option (depending on the junction design) could be to make it one-way in the wrong direction, could be cheaper than changing the kerbs and pavements, unless the cul-de-sac would be simply be via some plastic bollards or big planters and paint, but that would look a bit ‘temporary’.

Yes, that is an option. It wouldn’t completely remove the transiting traffic as some does go the other way, but it would help.

I’ve been through this over many years in London. Something’s changing on a cycle route/street near me in the next few months and looking the other day I first contacted the council/councillors about it 13 years ago…. Expect it to be a long haul – nothing happens quickly.

Start by trying to get more residents together – councillor’s will be more likely to act for a group rather than an individual. You could ask the councillors if they’ve had other complaints/requests and if they could put you in touch with the other residents.

@crazy-legs thanks for that, very useful.

The other option (depending on the junction design) could be to make it one-way in the wrong direction,

They did that with a road by my house. It made surprisingly little difference. Cars constantly go the wrong way up it, they just go twice as fast to minimise the chance of meeting someone coming the other way.

@peekay – no worries.

That’s the “thing” you need to apply for, as others have said very well though, HOW you ask for it is going to be important. Some sort of Residents Association, an organised group of locals rather than one person will have far more weight.

One person is easy to write off as a crank, as a Mr Angry and councils are used to dealing with people like that on a regular basis. A group that can put forward well-reasoned points (rather than “we want our road closed cos we’re NIMBYs”) is more difficult to just brush off. Keep records of ALL correspondence – if that Councillor is voted out in May, it’ll be useful to start negotiations with the new incumbent to say “here’s what we did with your predecessor…” Otherwise they’ll just start the whole process all over again.

Same for neighbours so that no one resident can say “What’s all this bollocks going on?!” – make sure that the proposal is known about and (ideally) has a majority support. No good if 4 residents want it and the rest of the street doesn’t!

They did that with a road by my house. It made surprisingly little difference. Cars constantly go the wrong way up it, they just go twice as fast to minimise the chance of meeting someone coming the other way.

self selecting sample though. people ignoring a one way more likely to also ignore speed limit/appropriately reduce their speed due to conditions.

As the “access only” restrictions are being ignored you also need to complain to the local police and council highways team. Get others to do the same.

Use the evidence of the temporary closure during works that permanent closure isn’t going to be an issue

The council might want to close it – in York they temporarily closed a rat-run which has today been announced it’ll be permanent. Made the lives of those people living in the area the rat-run went through nicer by the sound of it… lower pollution in the area etc (yes, I know the pollution just moves to the queues of traffic waiting to go the long way around…).

Simple solution. Emergency vehicles can slalom past and all other road users are deterred from entering the area

It’s certainly been happening in South Manchester. Some are great, some not so well though out. I’d see about speaking to your local Councillors to see if they have any schemes active as that change could be slotted in.

The scheme near my brother’s house has had to be revised as they literally blocked off most of the roads without any obvious way through. It ended up dumping all traffic onto my brother’s road. after review, some of these restrictions have remained which everyone is happy with. Striking a balance is sometimes difficult.

The people suggesting getting a group together rather than just approaching the councillor are right IF the councillor doesn’t immediately show interest – but its a lot of work to do if:

– the councillor has already had a few people raise concerns and just needs a wee extra push
– the council have an initiative on to sort roads out for active travel and this fits nicely (I know ours are consulting on which Space for People Initiates are kept/scrapped/expanded)
– or theres a group you don’t know about who lobby for road safety, pollution etc in your area; in my wee town the Community Council, the local green lobby group, are obvious ones whilst on a larger scale there Spokes etc would lobby on making the road safer for cyclists etc.

I’ve championed campaigns with the council including constituting groups to do so, and its a lot of work, but I’ve also popped into a councillors surgery and had a road safety issue addressed in less than a week just from a lone voice pointing out something they were unaware of.

Also part of me questions a sign on a public highway that is factually incorrect. “unsuitable for through traffic” or similar would make pedantic me happy

The sign at the end we hope to block is actually the red circular ‘no motor vehicles’ prohibition sign, with “Except for Access” underneath.
The other end of the street has this and also a blue “Unsuitable for HGVs” rectangular advisory sign.

The sign at the end we hope to block is actually the red circular ‘no motor vehicles’ prohibition sign, with “Except for Access” underneath.
The other end of the street has this and also a blue “Unsuitable for HGVs” rectangular advisory sign.

I think this gives you a far stronger case – council already accepts there shouldn’t be through traffic here but the signs are being ignored. Which should make it far simpler and IMO makes it less important to get a group together.

I would just go straight to the councillor and say – these signs are being ignored, how do we get either a) enforcement or b) road physically closed at one end. Going to a councillors surgery and meeting in person is likely to save you time in the long run – harder to ignore someone sitting in front of you and harder to disregard as ‘nimby troublemaker’. Personally I think it’s worth treating all meetings with coucillors or officers as a “business meeting” – they’re in ‘work mode’ so you get further if you are too, both in approach and dress.

So there is already a red circular vehicles prohibited sign at both ends of the road?

So there is already a red circular vehicles prohibited sign at both ends of the road?

Just double checked and the prohibition sign is only in place at the end that we would like to consider blocking. The other end just has a “Unsuitable for HGVs” sign.

I think this might just be a case of missing, or incorrectly applied signage, as if a TRO is in place restricting motor vehicle access resulting in needing to show the prohibition sign at one end then surely it is also needed at the other end….?

If you have a Town or Parish Council, you might try raising the matter there; they may have some influence at the County Council and should be easier to approach.

I think this might just be a case of missing, or incorrectly applied signage, as if a TRO is in place restricting motor vehicle access resulting in needing to show the prohibition sign at one end then surely it is also needed at the other end….?

No. That sign applies at that point. Effectively it’s the same as a no entry sign for most purposes – it doesn’t restrict driving once you’re on the far side of it)