Traffic Fears at Lynch Wood and Wistow Way

Xs mark the spots where crossing the road at Lynch Wood is dangerous.

This morning I accompanied a local Orton Southgate resident to the roundabout where Lynch Wood meets Wistow Way, Oundle Road and Orton Parkway to see for myself why local people are growing increasingly concerned about the volume and speed of traffic in the area.

Lynch Wood is a thriving business park. The businesses there employ many people from our local area and further afield and long may this continue. However, the recent arrival of a new business has resulted in a huge surge in traffic to the area, particularly at morning and evening peak times.

Posted by Julie Howell on Tuesday, 25 October 2016

Traffic from the Lynch Wood roundabout along Wistow Way is often heavy and fast moving. Although there is a bridge for pedestrians to use if they want to get from Orton Brimbles to Orton Wistow, residents trying to access Wistow Primary School on foot from Orton Southgate and Orton Northgate are more like to use a crossing that has no facility to make it safe for pedestrians. People I've spoken to fear it is only a matter of time before someone is seriously injured or killed.

Eventually, I was able to cross the road when a car slowed and waved me across. However, this is only safe when traffic coming the other way is also willing to stop. One can easily imagine why a pedestrian in a hurry might take their chances and dart through the traffic, but it really isn't safe to do so.

Another Orton Southgate resident says, "As one who walks to Wistow Primary School most days, it's very tricky crossing the road at Lynch Wood as cars are normally non-stop. Nine times out of ten it's a case of waiting for a car to slow and flash its headlights. We always cross at the spot with the traffic island so at least we can wait safely in the middle of the road. Making it an official pedestrian crossing would be a huge help."

Posted by Julie Howell on Tuesday, 25 October 2016

It's half term at the moment, so traffic is much lighter that normal and I will take another look next week to see how bad it is when parents as well as employees are trying to use these roads. I'm told it's quite normal now for traffic to be backed up along Orton Parkway all the way to the roundabout at Newcombe Way, making it very difficult to exit Orton Southgate residences by car.

It's very clear that the roads in this area can be dangerous for pedestrians and very congested for motorists too.

Are you affected by the traffic at Lynch Wood in the mornings? Do you feel safe negotiating these roads in the morning and afternoon at peak times? How do you think safety or congestion could be improved?

Transcript of video one: Good morning. So I’m at Lynch Wood this morning which is the main business park in Orton Waterville. We’ve got a real probably with traffic as you can probably see behind me. So, the roundabout behind me here is the one that feeds into Lynch Wood and it also has other roads off it such as Wistow Way, Oundle Road and Orton Parkway. It’s actually relatively quiet this morning because it’s half term, but still it doesn’t look quiet. Now as you can see it’s very, very difficult for pedestrians to get across here. Children need to get across to get to school and if you just about look behind me you can see that that’s the pathway across there and how am I ever supposed to get across this road. It’s very dangerous. So this morning I’ve come here with a resident and she’s going to show me the problems here and I don’t think this is the worst of it. I think if we go round the corner in a second we’ll find it's even more of a problem so I'll catch up with you there.

Transcript of video two: Good morning. So I’m now at Oundle Road where it feeds into Lynch Wood and it’s about 8:45am. This is actually half term at the moment so it’s not as busy as it might otherwise be but as you can see behind me there is a lot of traffic. It’s moving in, well the queue is not that slow is it? It’s very, very hard to cross here. I’ve actually been waiting to cross here for a while. So you can see there’s the crossing just behind me but I’m not able to use it unless a car slows down and lets me across. And then the problem that you have – I’ve got a big truck coming past now, very big truck – the problem that you have if someone says to you okay you can cross now you’re dependent on the people in the other cars realising that otherwise you might be stepping out in front of traffic. So it’s very, very dangerous here and me and someone who’s opposite me on the other side of the road right now have been trying to cross here for minutes and no one’s stopped to let us cross and there’s been no gap in the traffic. Imagine if you’re a young child with not too much road sense or you’re pushing a pushchair or you’re disabled. It is possible to walk a bit further down. You can see in the distance a footbridge there but people don’t always use footbridges do they, and one can't help but think we need some kind of measure here to make it safer for pedestrians.