Northern 'Relief' Road to create havoc

Swale Borough Council’s principle engineer has told the council

 “that traffic modelling carried out for development of the NRR around Sittingbourne had suggested that it would attract a significant amount of extra traffic.”

So years before its completion and with a second large housing development in the balance to fund the last phase, Swale own engineers have acknowledged that this so called relief road has been a complete failure.

This flagship Swale Forward project with its multi-million pound investment might well bring Swale to its knees and the solution, unbelievably another relief road. On the subject of the proposed solution the borough engineer says

 “the full impact of this was not yet clear, but that it was likely to have some effect, whether it was positive or negative.”

Well that’s good enough for Swale to ignore the existing feasibility study which quite clearly proved that the effect was negative and proceed with another study financed by the Kent Science Park, who will no doubt be completely objective and unbiased in their appraisal.

Swale have suggested that the Kent Science Park are free to do as they like and as the study is being paid for by them, Swale have no input. This is a little hard to believe given that its forms a core part of their Transport Strategy and any such study will have to be based on a set of criteria which fits in with their own planning policies. Or perhaps it’s simply a way to avoid public criticism when we discover just how much housing is included to pay for it.