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Not perfect but all in all, Drayton Manor
Park I’ve written a lot over the past two years about the traffic and travel problems in Fazeley and the future growth of Drayton Manor Park. In the last week I’ve received a comprehensive report on the traffic movements for the season just finished.
Matthew Ellis with Colin Bryan It was the back end of 2008 after a series of talks with the owners of Drayton Manor Park, Staffordshire Highways, national Highways Agency and Staffordshire Police that I reached agreement to establish a project to tackle the traffic congestion problems in a more structured way. So, in February 2009 the Travel Management Group was formerly established and Drayton Manor Park commissioned a specialist company to coordinate things and provide expert technical advice and information. Over the last 9 months a series of measures have been put in place involving new signage on the M6Toll, changes in signage on the motorway networks around Birmingham, Warwickshire and Tamworth, new entry and exit arrangements to the theme park and new car parks inside the Manor funded to the tune of nearly £400k by the owners. The result is a general improvement to traffic flows in the area despite a very large increase in visitor numbers to Drayton Manor Park. But there were a couple of serious blips in August which again brought the area to a halt. Those, however were not the result of Park numbers but were caused by a utility company carrying out emergency roadworks near to the traffic lights in Mile Oak. Absolute madness at the busiest visitor times for the Park and I’m not entirely convinced it was the level of emergency that warranted the resulting gridlock which Drayton Manor Park got the blame for.
Growing visitor numbers to the Park As a result of the report just completed more tweaks will be made to operations and signage and, above all, Staffordshire Highways will be much tougher on allowing utility companies to carry out any works which could cause traffic chaos in the area at key Park visitor times. The report does prove what worked and what didn’t but overall it paints a pretty positive picture. It’s now down to the national Highways Agency to agree to turn the pilot signage schemes on motorways into permanent ones and I’ll play my part in making sure that happens. There are also plans afoot to improve local signage in the Mile Oak area to stop coaches following their sat-navs onto the Deer Park estate and improvements for next season to public transport to encourage visitors from further afield to use new special train services to Tamworth and then by shuttle bus to the Park. All in all I’m pleased with the work done and really pleased that with the help of several agencies there is a much clearer picture of how traffic in the area moves during busy and quieter times. And that is the most important thing to ensure onging improvements. What is clear still as a result of this is the need for traffic infrastructure improvement for the wider Ventura Park area and probably the Fazeley island by the Town Hall. I’ll press for that next year although the national finances mean that budget may be even harder to find. We’ll have a go though. |
