Wigan Council say £7000 to much for a life!

I have been involved with trying to get some kind of road calming on Eccleston Street. This is a street in Wigan that is a one way street and usually has cars parked on both sides from the residents. Because it is a narrow street and one way the cars are racing down the street.

The street has a number of elderly residents plus young children living on it. And with visibility very much reduced due to the cars parked then an accident is very possible. To reduce this a number of residents have asked me to help try and reduce the risk by way of slowing the cars down on the street. I have contacted Wigan Council to see what measures are available to the street and out of these options which would be best. The response is that speed humps are really the only option and after doing a survey, which I requested, they have come back and said that it would cost £7000 to do the scheme and therefore to expensive as they do not ave the money to do this. One of the reasons why Wigan Council will not do the scheme is the way that they organise which schemes to do is to look at where have the most accidents been over the last 3 years. On this street there have been none so it does not come anywhere near top of the list. I would argue that whilst black spots are important to deal with we should also look at areas where there is a high risk factor.

Cllr Gareth Fairhurst added,

" Looking at the 3 year accident history is important but looking at the bigger
picture and looking at the risk factor is a must too. For example there
have probably been no accidents in the street over the last 3 years because
there have been no small children in the street. Now that there are small
children living there raises the risk for an accident. For Wigan Council to
say that they do not see this as a priority and it is not cost effective to do
this scheme is ridiculous. I am sure there are others streets like this but
Wigan Council just does not seem to care about these risk to the residents of
People."