Transport in Northumberland

Seems the worst thing the LibDems have against us is ‘The Greens are against dualling the A1’ – which is true, I’ve never denied it, and I’m happy to give reasons if requested. But dualling the A1 is for central government to fund, it’d be too much for regional funding let alone the new Northumberland Council. However – there are a number of transport initiatives we would like the new council to undertake:

i) Make best use of ICT to avoid the need to travel in the first place
ii) Develop and use car sharing, travel plans etc, especially for trading estates and other employment centres.
iii) Make better use of bus services to feed the trains at rail stations
i) Develop the expanding concessionary bus fare plans to facilitate realistic journeys; and include local rail services in the scheme
ii) Provide bus information points (including maps) near the centre of all towns and villages, co-located with other services where possible.
iii) A single county-wide car parking scheme as part of integrated traffic management which balances the viability of towns and retail centres
iv) Better parking provision at all stations in the County to facilitate transfer to rail for the longer part of the journey.
v) Develop a strategic road policy to make best use of the County's key roads, recognising that increased capacity generates increased traffic.
vi) Re-classification of under-used rural roads as quiet lanes, re-directing road maintenance funds to key parallel roads used to get people to work education retail and leisure.
vii) Introduce a maximum 30mph speed restriction between the name signs of all named villages
viii) Relocate 30mph signs to include all junctions etc near to the existing signs, eliminating the need for early warning signs.

I’ll post more specific infrastructure proposals later…