Les Effards resident Dawn Robin anticipates problems getting out of her Hedgehog Rescue Centre driveway at school times if the road remains two-way and fears that speeding will increase if it is made one-way. (Picture by Adrian Miller, 0573741)
LES EFFARDS residents are being kept in the dark over traffic arrangements at the new Baubigny secondary schools. Some suspect that their road will be made one-way but say they have been told nothing.
‘Nobody has bothered to come and talk to us and let us know what is going on,’ said Guernsey Hedgehog Rescue Centre proprietor Dawn Robin.
She said that the narrowness of the road would make getting in and out of her gate difficult when traffic was queuing at the pedestrian traffic lights. ‘Are we supposed to drive around the block and wait until the road is clear?’ she said. ‘Building two schools so close together is ridiculous.’
In places the road was so narrow it was virtually impossible for two vehicles to pass.
‘If they make it one-way, it will make it easier for people to speed as they tear up here already, particularly motorbikes.’
Work is currently in progress to connect properties in the road to the main drain.
Mrs Robin said she felt sorry for the abuse the contractors had to take daily from people trying to drive through the closed road.
Housewife Karen Guillemet said connecting properties to the sewer network should at least reduce the number of vehicles that used the road.
‘I’m sure it will have to be made one-way as it was quite busy here before, but we don’t know what they’ve decided,’ she said.
Mrs Guillemet said she walked her two children to Hautes Capelles Primary School and the pavement was very narrow.
‘At the top end of Les Effards people have to mount the pavement when something is coming the other way, especially school buses.
‘It’s very difficult to say what it’ll be like until the schools open, but I think it will have to be resolved.’
Phil Ozanne said he was not against the schools – St Sampson’s High and Le Murier special needs – being there in principle, but he had raised concerns from the start about safety in the surrounding roads.
He had made his views clear at a meeting at Hautes Capelles when the site of the new schools was yet to be confirmed.
He feared that it was only a matter of time before a child was seriously injured or killed and said that the blame would lie with Education.
‘Deputy Martin Ozanne [outgoing Education minister] has been having a go at the Environment Department because it’s dragging its heels on how it plans to make the road safe, but it can’t do it because the schools should not have been here in the first place.’
He said an access road should have been put at the back of the schools site towards Belle Greve and another towards Route des Coutanchez, to distribute traffic.
‘They’ll have to stagger the times that schools come and go because when Hautes Capelles is starting or finishing it’s chaos now already.’
An Environment Department spokesman said the board had agreed in principle on 11 March to make the roads around the school a pedestrian priority zone. He would not say whether Les Effards would be made one way.
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