Campaign to re-open Exeter street closed during covid

Petitioners says scheme displaces traffic, not reduces it

Hundreds of people have signed a petition calling for a closed-off Exeter road to be re-opened to traffic.

Dryden Road was closed to cars in 2020 as part of a project to make it easier to cross the city by bike while public transport services were scarce during the pandemic.

The closure has stayed in place ever since.

Now many locals want the road to be opened again, saying the closure has increased traffic problems in other places, causing pollution and danger for families on the school run.

The petition – on the Change.org website – calls for the road to be opened in both directions to motor vehicles as soon as possible. More than 430 people had signed it in the first 24 hours.

It says: “We believe there exists an opportunity to provide safe alternative options to accommodate pedestrians, cyclists and vehicles.

“The current restrictions have led to displaced traffic on nearby residential roads, most of which are narrower than Dryden Road, and onto already busy and congested bus routes.

“Local residents believe this has created unsafe and unhealthy walking routes especially to nearby schools and nurseries.”

One campaigner described the continued closure of the road as ‘barmy’.

He went on: “The impact of this closure – first undertaken as a ‘social distancing’ measure – stretches far and wide across the city affecting commuters, those accessing hospitals, hospice workers and those on school runs as well as families and residents.”

The Exeter highways and traffic orders committee – made up of county and city councillors – has agreed to look at the closure again after it was raised at a recent meeting by Alderman Olwen Foggin, a former Lord Mayor of Exeter.

She told the committee the closure had sent traffic on to diversion routes which were too narrow to cope.

“You are sending all the traffic onto walk-to-school routes,” she said. “There is extra congestion in the housing estates. This is exposing lots of schoolchildren to excessive pollution.”

She said the ‘chaos’ should have been considered before the road was blocked, and she told the committee that it was a ‘social injustice’ that traffic problems were being shifted into more densely populated areas.

Cllr Angela Nash (Reform, Wonford and St Loyes) said at the meeting: “It was put on to the residents and the benefit is very minor.

“A very few middle-class homes get the benefit and the pollution is being spread to other areas. The residents have had enough, and this needs to be addressed.”