R.A.G.E. (Roundabout Action Group of Ewenny)

2002 12 07

Firstly an apology, we have had very little action over the past month, mostly we wanted to see if the council would do anything, unfortunately there has been very little progress.

However the committee has now met twice and will be progressing our campaign with vigour, to see who is on board click here.

There is now a mission statement, click here to take a look.

We have renamed our little group as R.A.G.E. (Roundabout action group of Ewenny), we you got to have an catch name!

To catch up on the history and current news please go to the news page.

2002 10 02

The next meeting is on October 15th, 8:00 PM at the same venue (Bridgend Athletic R.F.C) on Ewenny Road. It has been confirmed that we will meet with Councillor H.C. Davies on Monday the 14th so we will be able to report back on your questions. Carwyn Jones the AM for the area will be at the meeting as well. We have written to South Wales Police and hopefully they will send a rep along.
Please spread the word about the meeting, we will distribute flyers as much as possible but please tell anyone who has an interest to come along. This meeting is definitely an open meeting.
We have had a meeting with Carwyn Jones (8th October), this was mainly to update Carwyn on the happenings to date and ask Carwyn to assist us obtaining information from the assembly. We will report back to the main meeting on the 15th..
The site now has a GMTV style poll, give your opinions online.
The meeting on the 25th was attended by nearly 50 people, what an excellent response. This project now has a very high profile but what we need to make things happen is to keep it on the agenda, see the notes of the meeting here, The formal letter to BCBC from Councillors R Young and E Hughes is on the History / Docs page.
We have a meeting planned for the 25th of September 2002 in the Bridgend Athletic Club @ 9:00 PM. Please make every effort to support the meeting. Local councillor Richard Young will be attending, click here for the agenda.
We have the response from the BCBC on our History/Doc page, please take time to read over as there are some important revelations.
Also we have included a history of the issue.
We have added a mailing list to the site.
The council now appear to be adopting a stance that there is no problem with the way this project has been handled and executed, this conclusion is arrived it by the drop in numbers of complaints. We find it rather intriguing that the status of an issue seems to be directly related to how much interest the local press show. We want this issue to demonstrate to the council that the people who pay their wages want more involvement in decisions of this nature and we now have the technology to do so.
If we stop complaining to the council more decisions will go unchallenged, what about the town centre, was it a good idea, has it improved the situation. Do we want ASDA , ALDI or more Tesco's, we should have input to the decisions. The local councillor for the Oldcastle ward is very positive about using the web to gather opinions, let's make sure we support him and the overall principle of real local democracy.
See out latest news here.
This site is dedicated to the pursuit of happiness and enlightenment via general discussions and moaning about why we now have about 100 lights decorating the roundabout located at the junction of the A48 with the B4265
Please bookmark our site.
It may sound strange why we are so angry but this roundabout is a small affair which sometimes resembles the M25 in congestion terms, it's even been suggested we should start selling hotdogs and serve chilled water to the tired motorists waiting to navigate the folly.
We hope to monitor the status of the roundabout by way of our incident page, if you have experienced a problem please log it here.
If you have a comment to make on our roundabout please do so here.
This site has a very serious purpose, to discover why a project of this magnitude has resulted in traffic chaos and a reduction in "quality of life" for the local populous and road user alike. If you want to have a chat about this, try the chat room here.
We hope over the coming weeks and possible months that this site will become one of the focal points in our campaign to remedy the problem.
Please click here for the location of our beloved roundabout.
We will be including a list of all the relevant documentation we are allowed to publish but this is an interesting start, click here for the code of practice on lighting controls.
BCBC (Bridgend County Borough Council) has a works update page, click here for more.
The office of the Deputy PM has a code of practice for dissemination of information during major infrastructure developments, click here for more.
The land compensation act puts some interesting perspectives on the situation, click here for more.
 

2002 09 23

We have a meeting planned for the 25th of September 2002 in the Bridgend Athletic Club @ 9:00 PM. Please make every effort to support the meeting. Local councillor Richard Young will be attending, click here for the agenda.

09-09-2002 - Latest developments:
 
I was ‘phoned this evening by our local councillor Richard Young on the matter of the Ewenny Road Roundabout development. 

The purpose of the call was to respond to my letter and subsequent meeting with officers of the BCBC Traffic Planning dept, and appraise me of the councils intentions regarding the roundabout. These intentions are: 

Site Technical meeting with traffic dept officers 1430 Wednesday 11/11/02. This is to review the plans of the development to allow the officers a clearer understanding of the issues raised by the Ewenny Residents, especially ingress / egress to residents’ properties. The objective of this meeting is to identify what are the causes of residents concerns and grievances and what remedial options are available.

• In response to this item I have identified to Mr  Young the difficulties experienced by residents as I have been informed as summarized below:

• Ewenny Road towards Brynteg School: Traffic travelling fast around blind bend makes ingress / egress dangerous.

• Ewenny Road from Brynteg School: Resident must cross 2 lanes of stationary traffic to access own drive. There have been several near misses here whilst waiting for long periods.

• Bypass towards Island Farm: Fast traffic around blind bend, no room for reversing into drives, very dangerous location, cannot access roundabout

• Bypass from Island Farm: 3 lanes of stationary traffic make access to roundabout (to go anywhere) very difficult / dangerous.

• Ewenny Road toward pottery: Two lanes into one with no markings – very dangerous. Residents along this stretch are typically in a queue of traffic ( due to the control of traffic) and cannot access drives. 

• Ewenny Road from pottery: lengthy queues of traffic make ingress / egress v.     difficult. 

Mr Young further informed that roundabout lane markings are to be redesignated tomorrow evening, weather permitting, or as soonest weather permits.

 In earlier correspondence with BCBC a meeting was requested with the Traffic Planning experts / authorities. Mr. Young has pursued this with the council and is establishing the availability of both a venue and traffic planning officers to attend this meeting. It was suggested that to get best value for all that this meeting be “agendarised”. To this end may I suggest a residents meeting to discuss and agree what agenda items are to be proposed.

Tony Smith 09/09/2002