Revitalising Dunstable: A High Street Update

THE VINE MAGAZINE – LOCAL NEWS:
As part of the changes to Dunstable High Street, Central Bedfordshire Council has been improving the town in three respects: traffic, air quality, and flooding.
Cllr Nigel Young gives us an update on the work being carried out.

Revitalising Dunstable: A High Street Update

Revitalising Dunstable: 

A High Street Update

 

Revitalising Dunstable: A High Street Update From Central Bedfordshire Council
Revitalising Dunstable: A High Street Update

By Cllr Nigel Young, Executive Member for Regeneration at Central Bedfordshire Council

 

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New Improved Dunstable High Street Includes Flood Protection

As part of our changes to Dunstable High Street, Central Bedfordshire Council has been improving your town in three respects: traffic, air quality, and flooding.

 

Traffic and Air Quality

After we opened our £40m Woodside Link road to take traffic from Sundon Road to Woodside Industrial Estate and to the M1 motorway, we put in place the lorry restrictions in Dunstable in January last year. The previous A5 road (now A505) through Dunstable High Street was then ‘de-trunked’, with a 7.5 tonne weight limit put in place to take HGVs away from the town centre. Now only heavy goods vehicles delivering to the local area can pass through. This has helped to ease local congestion and improve air quality for residents.

 

 

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Now that the Woodside Link road and the A5-M1 Link road (which we also helped fund) are taking the heavy traffic away from the town centre, it meant we could start giving you back your High Street. It had become akin to a dual carriageway when it was the old A5. The reason we widened the pavements was to reduce the width of the traffic lanes in Dunstable. This is because we want to create the feel of a more traditional market town, with cafes and seating out front on bigger pavements in the summer. So we’ve made £1.5milion worth of improvements to widen the pavements; removed the railings and put in extra crossing points so that pedestrians can get to the shops and businesses they want to visit; and added trees and benches to the High Street to help encourage pedestrians back into town.
We want only local traffic to come into town, rather than drivers viewing Dunstable as a through route. The changes we’ve made help encourage through traffic to use the new alternative, wider roads instead of the High Street. So only local traffic should be left in the town centre. And we’re looking at traffic calming measures and road layouts to stop traffic from using the back roads and residential streets as rat-runs.

Flooding

To help tackle the flooding that the town has sometimes suffered from during heavy rain and storms, we’re incorporating sustainable drainage solutions as part of the changes we’ve made to the town centre. We have laid permeable paving: this means the excess surface water seeps through the top layers to the ground, or away to enter the drains below. As well as being porous, our new pavements have raised kerbs with drainage holes which also help take away excess water to the underground drains.
We have also put in attractive new areas with trees and plants. Cleverly, these areas have built-in drainage features below them, and are called ‘raingardens’. An underground storage tank lets rainwater seep out slowly at a rate that the drains can cope with. The raingardens have a seating area, and all the plants will be varieties that love water. We have already installed these raingardens on West Street and Church Street. There will also be another future raingarden at the bus area on High Street South. We will also be putting in trees down a central reservation on High Street North, with grills around the trees to soak away rainwater from that area too.

 

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All these changes will make a noticeable improvement to the town. And we are continuing to bid for more funding, so that we can make further improvements, including to the layout of the main crossroads in town, including the crossing points there and at Queensway, as well as more flood prevention on High Street North and a floodwater soakaway on High Street South with 140,000 litre capacity.

Read more about the project at www.centralbedfordshire.gov.uk/yourhighstreet
or pop down and talk to your Central Bedfordshire Councillors and Dunstable Town Councillors, who hold surgeries on the first Saturday of every month in the Quadrant from 10:00 am until 12:00 pm.

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Revitalising Dunstable: A High Street Update


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Revitalising Dunstable: A High Street Update

Revitalising Dunstable: A High Street Update