At our recent Parish Meeting we were reminded of the work of the Highways and Speedwatch Sub-Committee.  John Wells gave the following report.

Highways and Speedwatch Review

• The Orchard has been resurfaced, as it was in a bad state.
• We now have a dropped kerb installed on the Health Centre side of The Orchard, opposite the ramp up from the car park to help wheelchair users and people with pushchairs etc, access the pavement over there more easily. I believe we’ve even managed to finally stop cars blocking it.
• Also re The Orchard, vans half parked on the pavement hinder pedestrians and block ambulances from getting through to the Health Centre on occasion. So we want to put double yellow lines on the car park side, once we get the funding. It costs around £7,000, mainly due to both the legal costs and getting approval from the Ministry of Transport in London.
• We’ve also requested that all the white lines around the centre of Gunnislake are repainted. From talks with Cornwall Highways I believe this will be completed in the 25/26 Cornwall budget.
• We have been pushing for years for a proper crossing point on the A390 to the 2 junior schools on the St. Ann’s/Drakewalls border…but the best we got was a ridiculously narrow and very dangerous central refuge, which most pedestrians have been too frightened to use. Finally, and after I had a rant at a recent Tamar to Moor Community mtg, our Highways sub-Committee has been informed that the refuge will be replaced by a proper signalised ‘Puffin‘ crossing …hopefully again in the 25/6 budget. The caveat to this is that it is subject to a safety audit, although the site has recently been surveyed by Cornwall Highways for installation of the new crossing.
• In the meantime the refuge will be removed…not because it is dangerous, but because lorries travelling west have to go on the wrong side of the road to be able to make the turn down toward Albaston and Calstock… and that IS dangerous on an increasingly busy road.

Speedwatch

In the nearly 3 years we have been operating along the A390 we have seen traffic increase by an average of more than 50% outside peak times. When we started our group we averaged approx. 400-450 vehicles passing our monitoring point in a one hour off peak session. This has now risen to an average of more than 650, and highs of 750 or more in an hour are not uncommon… and remember, this is over the winter period, before the summer season starts.

This traffic increase will doubtless get worse as and when the tolls eventually go up on the Tamar bridge, and the B3257 junction with the A30 at Plusha has its priorities permanently changed.

The large increased traffic volumes on the A390 have inevitably had a knock on effect with more traffic on Quarry Lane and Honicombe Lane….So, any perceived increases along those roads are NOT as has been claimed, as a result of the speed cameras we now have in St. Ann’s.

After a drop, speeding on the A390 is sadly again on the increase. On the last 2 occasions we were at a location near the station we have reported 35+ vehicles from each 1 hour session. Because of this, Devon & Cornwall police now frequently send a Speed Detection Officer to join us. Last week he booked 11 speeders in an hour …and they’ll soon be getting a potentially expensive letter in the mail.

Sadly, we do still occasionally get some abuse from passing vehicles, but it’s worth noting that the police now report all abusers to Cornwall Council’s licencing team, and any with shotgun licences may well lose them for anger management reasons.

The 1 downside to our team is that we frequently get requests to have Speedwatch in other areas of the parish, but these, (with the exception of Phil Spurr down in Calstock), have all fizzled out when we asked for volunteers.

Finally, I recently made a Speedwatch video for Cornwall Highways Road Safety Team. Because of the built up nature of most of the A390 through our parish the message being sent out is clear: Don’t speed. One example to think about: if you hit a child while driving at 30 mph, there is a 50% chance that child will die. Hit a child at 40 mph, and the mortality rate rises to 90%. So please don’t speed on our roads. It only adds a few seconds to most journeys if you obey the limits.

John Wells, 11-03-2025