Council rejects calls for traffic calming in ‘rat run’ village

Calls for traffic-calming measures to stop drivers using a village as a ‘rat run’ have been unsuccessful.

In a petition, residents of Rudry urged Caerphilly County Borough Council to consider lower speed limits to stop “persistent” speeding and dangerous driving through their village.

Community councillor Zoe Hewer, who led the petition, said the volume of traffic moving through Rudry had “massively increased” over the past 18 months and urged the local authority to act “before there is a serious accident or fatality”.

But in its response, the council said it would need “clear evidence” of a road safety issue to intervene, and to date “no such evidence has been identified”.

The council said it “places a high priority on road safety”, and physical traffic-calming measures would typically be considered for areas where there is a documented history of collisions or where “excessive” average speeds are recorded.

While the council acknowledged this approach “may sometimes appear reactive”, it said road safety “must be considered across the entire highway network, rather than at individual locations in isolation”, and traffic-calming measures are prioritised “where they can achieve the greatest overall benefit”.

Lowering the speed limit approaching the village could also have the unintended effect of drivers wrongly inferring it was safe to drive at a certain speed, rather than reading the road conditions.

The council explained the national speed limit is commonly applied to rural roads, and “a lower posted limit can, in some circumstances, create a misleading perception that the displayed speed is appropriate throughout the route”.

Following the council’s response, councillors Amanda McConnell and Chris Morgan, who are members of both the local authority and Draethen, Waterloo and Rudry Community Council, said: “We will continue to work on behalf of residents of Rudry and our rural areas to make our roads safer.

“We encourage residents to keep reporting incidents to 101, Go Safe and ourselves.”