New works to improve safety at Bridge Street crossing with overnight Bourges Boulevard closures

Anti-skid surfacing will be introduced on the approaches to the crossing on Bourges Boulevard, while vehicle-activated advanced warning signs will also be put in.

The works are due to take place overnight between Wednesday, November 25 and Tuesday, December 1 with traffic unable to travel between the Bishop’s Road and Crescent Bridge roundabouts.

The new safety measures follow a series of collisions between vehicles and pedestrians and cyclists in recent years which even led to a senior judge warning that a fatal crash was “inevitable”.

Sean Enright, who sits at Peterborough Crown Court, wrote to the Peterborough Telegraph in 2017 in a personal capacity after at least five collisions occurred in a 12 month period.

He said at the time: “Are we really going to stand by and do nothing until a fatality occurs?

“I write this letter because I work in the city centre and I use that crossing every day as do thousands of others.

“I see people crossing here, many of whom are old, young or disabled.

“The dangers of this crossing are self-evident and something needs to be done.”

Among those to be injured after a collision at the crossing was an eight-year-old boy, as well as a cyclist who collided with a lorry.

In August 2017, council cabinet member Cllr Peter Hiller stated that nobody had been “ploughed into” from his memory at the crossing. But a council spokeswoman said the new works follow a safety review which was commissioned after crashes which occurred two years ago.

She said: “Towards the end of 2018 there was a small cluster of collisions at the Bridge Street pedestrian crossing. Following this, a safety review was commissioned alongside a collision analysis of the crossing.

“The team undertaking the review identified some recommendations to improve the safety of the facilities. As a result, we are now implementing two of those recommendations: the application of a high friction surfacing material on the approaches to the crossing (commonly referred to as ‘anti-skid’ surfacing) and the installation of some vehicle activated (VA) advanced warning signs for motorists.

“The works are due to take place over-night from November 25, 2020.”

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