Who knows best? The locals, or the experts?
This is a question that I have repeatedly found myself asking over the years of writing this column.
It isn’t always an easy question to answer – because there are things that the experts know that the locals may not; and there are things that the locals know that the experts may not. But most of the mistakes I have witnessed in the last 13 years in West Dorset have been caused by over-estimating the expertise of the experts and under-estimating the knowledge of the locals.
Last week, I saw at first hand a striking example of this phenomenon.
For some years, I have been campaigning for a second pedestrian crossing at the west end of Winterbourne Abbas – a village that lies on the A35.
The continuous flow of traffic through the village makes it very important that people – and, in particular, school children – can cross the road safely at a pedestrian crossing in order to get to bus stops, visit their friends, and so forth. With just one crossing at the east end of the village, and with much of the population living at the west end, there has been a considerable tendency for people – and, in particular, children – to take their lives in their hands by crossing the road without a pedestrian crossing.
The same problem arises in Chideock and in Morcombelake – and it was therefore with huge relief that I (and many others) greeted the recent announcement by the Highways Agency that it was going to press ahead with new crossings in all three villages.
Work on the crossing at Winterbourne Abbas has already begun – and this is a major step forward.
But there is a little problem.
The new crossing is being located exactly where the bus currently stops. So the experts – who know a thing or two about the interaction of crossings and bus stops – have (no doubt, very sensibly) determined that the bus stop must be moved.
Unfortunately, however, there is no footpath between the place located for the new bus stop on the south side of the road and the point where the new crossing reaches the south side of the road. Result: children getting onto or off the bus who wish to make their way down to the crossing will have to perform a high-wire act, balancing themselves on a one-foot wide strip of grass between the A35 and the stream that runs through the village. Alternatively, of course, they may forsake the new crossing and take their lives in their hands by rushing across the A35 at the point where the bus stops.
Either way, as any local can point out, the result will not be the additional safety that the scheme is meant to provide.
I am now attempting to draw on the further goodwill of the Highways Agency to solve this problem – perhaps by creating a wider path between the A35 and the stream. But the interesting question is: why was there so little opportunity for the locals to bring their knowledge to bear?
Here, as in so many cases, the best efforts of the bureaucracies can be negated by failing to take into account facts that any local can tell you.
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