Introduction
People living around Coleridge Road have told us that motor traffic levels have increased in recent weeks (they have).
Some have claimed that the introduction of restrictions to motor vehicles on Mill Road are the cause of this increase. Are they right? Probably not.
Detailed traffic levels
The image below compares February 2025 traffic counts from County Council sensors on Coleridge and surrounding roads with the same counts from February 2024. The numbers shown are the difference in average daily motor traffic counts (excluding buses) when comparing these two months.
Conclusions
- Coleridge Road traffic in Feb 25 is noticeably higher than in Feb 24. This evidence backs up the anecdotal reports that we’ve heard.
- Mill Road traffic is reduced when comparing the same two months – as we would expect, the largest reduction comes from the sensor near the bridge.
- The A1134 ring road (Brooks Road + Perne Road) & Coldhams Lane traffic is substantially reduced. The ongoing major roadworks on these roads must be a big factor. These works started at around the same time as the bridge restrictions went in.
Our (cautious) conclusion: it is too early to definitively explain the cause of the increase in traffic levels on Coleridge Road. But one could plausibly hypothesise that the major roadworks on the A1134 ring road have a lot to do with it.
Also worth pointing out that
- Coleridge Road is the parallel road to Perne Road.
- There has been no significant change on Hills Road bridge. This is one of the primary alternatives to Mill Road bridge. If traffic from Mill Road had moved to Coleridge Road, we would expect it to carry on to Hills Road. But it hasn’t.
We can only test our hypothesis when the roadworks are complete and the motor traffic has reverted to normal patterns. We’ll repeat this analysis at this point.