Roads and traffic

Roads and traffic

A beleaguered shopper on a weekday morning waits for the chance to cross

Two main roads cross in the town centre at Bourne and in the absence of relief roads or a bypass, all traffic must pass this way either on the A15 from north to south or on the A151 from east to west. The town centre was the market place in years past, the hub of the community, scene of sheep fairs, processions, regimental marches and various gatherings, not least the celebrations to mark Queen Victoria's Diamond Jubilee in 1897 and the proclamation of King George V from the steps of the Town Hall in 1910. Today, it is difficult to cross the road at this point and traffic fumes are a health hazard.

The building and maintenance of our roads during the 19th century was the responsibility of the Vestry Meeting and it was not until 1873 that surveyors of highways were employed to ensure that they were kept in good order. The first were John Gibson and Charles Eldred who were appointed on Monday 24th March. The clerk, Mr John Bell, told the meeting: "So great a length of road now has to be maintained by the parish that it is desirable for efficient and paid surveyors to be appointed and they will be responsible for the roads being kept in a proper state of repair which is not the case at present." It was a casual approach to a mounting problem because their work was part time, both businessmen busy with their own affairs, Mr Gibson being a hay and corn merchant and maltster of West Street and Mr Eldred a brick and tile manufacturer of North Road. The Local Government Act of 1894 regularised this work by passing the responsibility to the newly-formed local authorities which appointed qualified highway surveyors working full time, so recognising the growth development of the country's road system. The building and maintenance of highways is now carried out by Lincolnshire County Council, a costly and highly efficient operation financed by a multi-million pound budget.

Buses and coaches were once a most popular form of travel and one that rivalled the railways. But the increasing number of car owners during the second half of the 20th century was a major factor in the closure of local railway lines and the curtailment of many bus routes. The coach companies were flourishing in the early years of the century and the green buses of the Lincolnshire Road Car Company linked Bourne with the neighbouring towns and villages while the history of Delaine Coaches Limited, from 1890 to the present day, gives a specifically local example of how public passenger transport not only developed but also survived the changes and is now one of the most successful in Britain today.

Increasing traffic flows have played a major part in the expansion of Bourne and brought it nearer urbanisation. In 1970, a sample traffic census revealed that in the peak hour between 8 a m and 9 a m on a Thursday market day, the number of vehicles entering the town by the four main roads was 733 while during the same hour, 642 vehicles left. But despite this motorised activity, Bourne was still considered to be a rural area and in January 1972, a fox appeared in the Market Place at 11.30 a m and was caught in the bus waiting room beneath the Town Hall, a reminder that the countryside was still not far away. Nevertheless, this once quiet country community was becoming busier and as the weekly street market was then held in the town centre, which was also a stopping place for buses, some regulation was needed and on Monday 11th June 1973, the first traffic lights were installed at a cost of £10,000.

Town centre in 1973
The town centre soon after the traffic lights were installed in 1973

They did not meet with universal approval and within a few days many people had voiced misgivings over the safety of shoppers. Bourne Urban District Council hastily arranged a meeting with the engineers and told them that changes must be made immediately because of complaints that there were no pedestrian crossing controls and this presented a very real danger, especially for children and old people, at what was becoming a very busy intersection in the town centre. After the meeting, the chairman, Councillor Percy Wilson, was most emphatic about the hazards involved. "Three-fifths of the children from Bourne Primary School have to use the crossings and they do not know where to cross", he said. "A traffic warden and local police have to help them. If people try to cross in West Street, they are likely to encounter traffic coming from South Street. We left the engineers in no doubt that their installation was not what we were led to believe. We are quite dissatisfied with the arrangements relating to the traffic lights and the pedestrian crossings are lethal. They are death traps. The flow of traffic must take second place to the safety of our people, especially the young and the old. Safeguards for them are uppermost in our minds."

Alterations to the system were eventually made but there was still criticism that the traffic lights in the town centre have outlived their usefulness and should have been replaced by a mini roundabout which would give a right of way to all traffic from the right. Such systems are now operating in all major towns and cities in Britain, and even in Bourne at other less sensitive spots such as West Street at the junction with Exeter Street, and in North Street at the junction with St Gilbert's Road and Meadowgate. It is believed that a similar arrangement in the town centre would ease vehicle flows and prevent the traffic jams that have become a common occurrence in recent years, and that this point has been amply demonstrated by the many failures of the lights in recent years when traffic flows continued smoothly and with little delay.

However, frequent breakdowns in the system persuaded Lincolnshire County Council that the traffic lights were in need of replacement and the work was carried out during the summer of 2004. Although this involved many diversions and long delays for vehicles and frustration for shoppers, the project was completed on schedule within ten weeks at a cost of £170,000 and the system became effective from Monday 28th September.

The enclosed refuge in the centre of West Street, known locally as "the pig pen", that enabled pedestrians wait until the road was clear, was retained but widened and enclosed with ornamental ironwork and the lights were synchronised to provide additional safety for anyone crossing.

The new traffic lights

Pedestrian crossing points around the intersection were fitted with rotating tactile cones to allow the visually-impaired know when it is safe to cross while other improvements included high friction anti-skid surfacing on the approaches to the lights. Kevin Brumfield, the county's area highways manager, said that despite periods of heavy rain, the work had gone very smoothly and had been completed two weeks earlier than anticipated. "It is designed to make the area safer for pedestrians as well and improving the operation of the lights and we now have proper crossing points for the elderly and disabled", he said.

There were also attempts during the 1970s to move the market off the streets because of the dangers being created by stalls erected alongside the pavements in North Street and West Street, so narrowing the space available for passing traffic although it was to be several more years before this was to become a reality. But it was obvious at this time that buses could not continue to use the Market Place as their terminus and so the construction of a new bus station was undertaken.

The chosen site was at the corner of St Gilbert's Road and North Street and the new facility came into use in the autumn of 1974 and although it meant a longer walk for bus passengers arriving in town for a day's shopping or business, it was an obvious and rational development. Shortly before Christmas the following year, a new town service was inaugurated with buses travelling at intervals on circuits from the bus station through many parts of the town.


The bus station at the corner of North Street and St Gilbert's Road

The bus station is still in use, mainly by Delaine Buses, the only remaining regular daily operator in the town, and in recent years a new covered waiting area has been added together with one of the modern-style public toilets although the original waiting room is frequently vandalised and covered with graffiti despite a warning by South Kesteven District Council in May 1996 that the damage was a liability on the public purse. During the autumn of 2000, it was announced that one of the parking bays was to be removed to make room for a new supermarket development that was planned nearby and so after more than a quarter of a century, the bus station has outlived its original importance to the town.

One of the familiar Delaine double-decker buses in South Street on its way to Peterborough, one of the company's regular services

Increasing vehicle movement through the town also threatened the Ostler memorial drinking fountain that had been standing in the market place for 100 years because it was creating a danger to passing vehicles and in 1960 it was moved to the seclusion of the town cemetery. Since then, the number of vehicles passing through Bourne has increased annually and the current traffic light system often appears to be totally inadequate, causing long tailbacks in all directions and annoying delays for drivers. On those occasions when the lights have failed and the roundabout system of giving way to traffic on the right was implemented, there were calls for this method to be introduced permanently but it was not given serious consideration by the county highways authority.

A bypass would be the obvious answer and in 1991, Lincolnshire County Council did announce that work was due to start on a Bourne bypass in April 1994 with a completion date of October 1995 but the scheme was shelved when the government drastically pruned its road building programme and with the cost of new carriageway estimated at £1 million per mile, Bourne is a low priority and it is unlikely to be reinstated in the foreseeable future.

A double bend in South Street, the main road leading out of Bourne on the A15, is acknowledged as the major accident black spot for the town and yet has commanded little attention from the highways authorities over the years, a responsibility that now rests with Lincolnshire County Council. This spot, overlooked by the Abbey Church, was the scene of yet another bad accident on Wednesday 12th June 2002 when a 38-tonne articulated refuse lorry crashed into a roadside cottage, No 31 South Street, demolishing part of the outside wall and sending rubble crashing down into the street below where children had been walking past just moments earlier.

There have been many other accidents here over the years, one of the worst in 1989 when a Royal Mail lorry ploughed into the same cottage, which is a Grade II listed building and stands immediately on the bend, and five years ago a car suffered a similar fate. There have also been fatalities, the most recent in October 1998 when a van driver was killed on the corner as he drove into Bourne.

Those responsible for road safety in the Bourne area know that this double bend is one of the most dangerous in the county. An awareness of such accident blackspots began to develop early in the 20th century when the motor car was still a rare sight on the road and yet in 1909, the newly formed Lincolnshire Automobile Club supplied danger warning signs that were erected in Abbey Road. The double bend in South Street was known as Dr Gilpin's corner because the good doctor then lived and ran his practice from Brook Lodge, the former vicarage next to the church, and it began to cause some disquiet about the same time and yet the local authorities turned down a proposal to purchase land at this point with a view to widening the roadway in 1910.

However, there were several mishaps on the corner and early in 1917, danger signs were erected after a complaint by a local resident who was involved in an accident not with his car, but with his horse and cart. There were more collisions in subsequent years and in 1928, Kesteven County Council, then the highways authority, was asked to improve the road as a matter of urgency but as we all know, nothing was done. The problem was exacerbated by the railway that crossed the road a few yards further south and the traffic delays were compounded when the level crossing gates were shut to allow a train to pass. Although this added inconvenience disappeared when the Bourne to Spalding line closed in 1959, the situation has become far worse in the intervening years because of the massive increase in through traffic.

The local authorities missed a second chance to improve the road at this point when a cottage attached to the smallholding No 35 South Street was demolished in January 1977. The location of the property was unfortunate because it stood on the west side and looked as though it was leaning forwards into the road at a most unsafe angle, creating a road hazard for the increasing traffic flows of the previous decades, and although scheduled as a Grade II building, it was pulled down in January 1977. This was the perfect chance to improve the highway at this point and remove a highly dangerous black spot and yet again, nothing was done. Instead, permission was given to build two new houses on the land that had been made vacant by the demolition although they were sited well back from the road.

But the double bend remains, a nightmare for motorists during the rush hour periods, especially in the evenings, when queues of traffic tail back as far as the grammar school and even further and each accident that occurs reminds us of another tragedy lurking just around the corner. This is one of the worst stretches of urban road in Lincolnshire and is in dire need of improvement or replacement as a matter of urgency and yet the local authorities do nothing.

UPDATED NOVEMBER 2005