I want residents to know that the issues with regards to Road Safety on Linthouse Lane is still very much an issue for your Councillors. We recognise the concerns you have about road safety. Following the latest road traffic incident a number of days ago. I wrote again to the City Council and their road safety team of highway engineers. I am now publishing their response in full, to our request for further and better Road Safety measures. Here is the Local Authority response. It relates to speeding vehicles on Linthouse Lane, and the Traffic and Road Safety team have provided the following response:
“In response to your enquiry regarding Road Safety on Linthouse Lane, I can provide the following information and response.
Specifically in relation to the recent incident to which you refer, I have not received any contact or information from West Midlands Police regarding the road traffic incident shown in your photograph. However, depending on the severity of injuries to those involved, I will either be contacted directly by WMP or it will appear on the West Midlands Personal Injury Collision Database in due course. Consequently, at this stage we do not know the circumstances or causations that led to the incident.
Each year my team undertaken an analysis of Personal Injury Collisions (PIC’s) across the network in order to identify those locations and routes with the highest risks to target our limited resources. We look at both specific locations such as junctions and whole routes (individual roads). To compare routes equitably, we calculate the number of PICs per kilometre of road in the preceding three year period. We then rank the roads in order to identify which routes to investigate in more detail before finalising our Programme of interventions.
I have checked our analysis which was undertaken in January 2022 and can report that Linthouse Lane was ranked 61st with a figure of 6.0 PIC’s/km of road. This was slightly higher than it’s 2021 ranking of 72nd but still quite some way off being justifiable for including in our Capital Programme list of schemes. We will of course include Linthouse Lane in our analysis for the coming year and include it in our scheme list if justifiable based on the above objective criteria.
On a more positive note, whilst City of Wolverhampton Council is not responsible for enforcement of speed limits (that responsibility lies with West Midlands Police) we do have an annual programme of installation of Variable Message Speed Warning signs (VAS) that flash up to advise drivers to slow down, if exceeding a threshold above the speed limit. I am aware that we have installed our mobile battery VAS signs on Linthouse Lane in the past however we have identified Linthouse Lane as a road that would benefit from having permanent mains powered signs installed. I am pleased to be able to inform you that Linthouse Lane is one of the roads selected for the next tranche of signs and so my team member, will be organising the arrangements for installation works for two of VAS signs as soon as practically possible.
I will also ask one of my team to visit Linthouse Lane in the coming weeks to check that all signs and road markings are present and in an acceptable condition.
I am aware that road safety is an emotive subject but hope that you will appreciate that we must prioritise our limited resources appropriately using statistical evidence to benchmark all routes across the City.”
Councillor Phil Bateman said “I have published the response in full. Because getting the road safety investment to improve our highways has never been easy. But the lack of resources for the whole City in this policy area, is very much a determinant of how the available funds are used. We have not given up hope. We will continue to make the case. Plus we will also be pressing the Police to do more in suppressing speed, and to do their utmost to patrol Linthouse Lane.
