Following a three fold increase in traffic along Military Road, Rye Town Council unanimously agreed this week to ask East Sussex County Council (ESCC) to engage much earlier in future with the town council when major highway schemes affect Rye. This follows a month of chaos along the A268, at both sides of Peasmarsh which has particularly affected Rye’s hospital and medical centre on Rye Hill.
The roadworks are due to finish this week, but mid-week much remained to be done on Rye Hill though the work (the last of three stages along the A268) had been extended by a week, as well as being split into two parts to maintain and improve access to the hospital site. Mid-week, Rye Hill was closed between Fair Meadow and the Military Road turning at the bottom of the hill, and there were angry exchanges there between workmen and motorists at the junction.
Military Road was frequently congested and sometimes halted between the junction onto the A268 and the tennis club on the edge of town as traffic tried to squeeze past parked cars and because of the three-fold increase in traffic. Staff at the local pub, the Globe, expressed great relief that the work was coming to an end.
The hospital and medical centre, who between them handle hundreds of appointments each week, only had a couple of days warning that the month long roadworks planned back in January by ESCC were due to start.
And, while it may have been relatively easy for the GPs in the medical centre to contact Rye patients, the hospital had planned visits for the mobile MRI scan and breast screening units whose patients often come from much further away. Also both places have patients attending from surrounding villages as well as Rye itself, who faced long diversions in earlier stages of the work.
As the works got closer to the hospital, Rye News conducted a traffic survey at the site entrance which confirmed Town Councillor Pat Hughes’ strongly expressed concerns to ESCC that the site was very busy and patients faced considerable disruption – particularly if they were having tests for life threatening concerns. And she was also concerned that traffic would attempt to bypass the roadworks by using the narrow and potentially dangerous Houghton Green Lane, which she knew well as Operations Manager for Rye Community Transport.
Rye News confirmed those worries this week with another mid-week midday traffic survey at the junction of Houghton Green Lane with Military Road which showed a three fold increase in traffic caused solely by traffic wanting to use the lane and a possible accident in the making. Traffic from Appledore to Rye, and vice-versa, is usually light as there are other preferred routes to Ashford or Tenterden, but the few vehicles there are tend to speed up along the very straight Military Road.
Queues however have been building of vehicles turning into and out of Houghton Green Lane and I saw two near misses and a van which overtook on the inside a car turning left out of the lane towards Rye. There were between 400 and 500 vehicle movements in total in an hour along the lane, both going away from and coming towards Rye. And there was often a queue of six or more vehicles waiting to turn into Military Road – and sometimes into the lane as it is very narrow and even the smallest van can cause problems.
However the position round the Globe was much worse because of parked cars. Under normal circumstances up to 200 vehicles an hour can pass the Globe (going in both directions) but recent figures have shown around 600 an hour with the tailback from Military Road stretching back over the railway bridge into Landgate.
ESCC chairman local councillor Keith Glazier was unable to attend the Town Council to make his usual report, but told the Town Clerk he was grateful to Cllr Hughes and others for providing local knowledge to minimise the impact of the roadworks – though Hughes’ request for the lane to be made one way temporarily was rejected.
Rupert Chubb, ESCC Director of Communities, Economy and Transport, said “it simply isn’t practical with the volume of resurfacing that we are doing across the county each year to sit down with every group of local stakeholders” but the Town Council disagreed – unanimously. Cllr Hughes said she intended to produce a report on the roadworks which she considered to be “a textbook example of how not to manage a major highways scheme”. Patients attending the hospital and medical centre, those who live along Houghton Green Lane and Military Road in particular and most motorists in Rye and along the A268 may well agree.