Would the Minister provide updated projected traffic figures for the St. Peter’s Valley Road eastbound, Mont Felard southbound in percentage terms and numbers at morning peak times

3.10   Deputy J.A.N. Le Fondré of St. Lawrence of the Minister for Transport and Technical Services regarding projected traffic figures:

Further to the figures recently provided by the Minister for Planning and Environment relating to developments approved, completed or the subject of planning applications in St. Ouen, St. Peter, St. Brelade , St. Lawrence and St. Mary, would the Minister provide updated projected traffic figures for the St. Peter's Valley Road eastbound, Mont Felard southbound in percentage terms and in absolute numbers at morning peak times?

Deputy G.W.J. de Faye (The Minister for Transport and Technical Services): Might I remind the Deputy that this type of question is perhaps more happily answered as a written question, but of course, so the Deputy is his own man and maybe he is stirred by the charismatic nature of my delivery. [Laughter] My traffic engineers predict that from the developments approved or proposed in the western parishes over the last 18 months, traffic using St. Peter's Valley heading towards St. Helier during the morning peak hour can be expected to increase by about 170 vehicles or 23 per cent and on Mont Felard by 45 vehicles or 12 per cent. This makes no allowance for development proposals in St. Brelade as traffic from that Parish would not be expected to use St. Peter 's Valley, though there is a knock-on effect with vehicles using the valley when Beaumont is congested. I should caution that these figures have been prepared at short notice and there are a whole host of factors

which will affect the predictions. Many of the private developments are on sites with previous use so there will be an element of over-counting. Figures also assume that the occupants of the developments will be new road users and not simply re-homed ones. I have a comprehensive and detailed list of the figures which I shall present to Deputy Le Fondré. I will simply just note one item from that, and that is that the current flow on St. Peter's Valley by the Tesson Chapel section is 730 vehicles - as I read this - per hour and the current flow on Mont Felard southbound is 380 vehicles per hour. I shall pass these figures to Deputy Le Fondré.

1. Deputy J.A.N. Le Fondré:

I would like to thank the Minister for his full  and very rounded delivery, but 2

queries; one is to clarify that the figures he is proposing to give me are for actual developments rather than predicted developments from now, going forward. In other words, using the specific example of the H2 site in St. Lawrence, will it take account of the projections for 129 houses? Secondly, could he also confirm that the projected traffic delays from Mont Felard from that one site alone are likely to result in an increase in traffic queues of something over 90 per cent?

Deputy G.W.J. de Faye:

The figures will take into account projections we have for the following sites: H2 Westview in St. Ouen, H2 in St. Peter's Village, the H2 site in Sandybrooke), private developments in St. Ouen, private developments in St. Mary, private developments in St. Peter and private developments in St. Lawrence. I regret I have no details on traffic queues. I remind the Deputy that last time he asked me about that, I did point out that traffic queue length is not a measurement that my department uses.

2. Deputy G.P. Southern :

On a related traffic density question; when will the Minister release figures - which I believe have already been collated - about proposed changes to the waste site on La Collette? He is surely not going to expect Members to take in complex traffic flow figures on the day of his citing of the La Collette dump debate, is he?

Deputy G.W.J. de Faye:

I believe these issues may well have been already covered at presentations made to States' Members but I am happy to run over that again. The deliveries to the Energy from Waste plant in Bellozanne Valley numerate approximately 500 vehicles a day. The significant feature of those deliveries is the timing and that is because waste collections are normally carried out in the early morning. The bulk of the delivery arrivals to Bellozanne Valley is roughly between 10 a.m. and about 1.30 p.m. This happens to coincide precisely with the lowest level of use of the underpass and also traffic movements in the Commercial Buildings, La Collette area. So, realistically, there is no predicted traffic problem on our current assessments.

Deputy G.P. Southern :

The question was when was he going to release detailed figures of traffic flows to La Collette?

Deputy G.W.J. de Faye: Just did, Sir.

3. Connétable G.W. Fisher of St. Lawrence :

I would just like clarification on a figure that the Minister mentioned; I believe he said that the flow per hour of vehicles on Mont Felard was predicted to be a 138? Was that correct? The reason I question that is because I recently had some figures from the Minister's department in respect of the flow of vehicles along St. Lawrence main road, which one would expect to be very, very similar to Mont Felard - which is at the end of St. Lawrence main road - and I was told that it was 6,200 vehicles in 24 hours. That does not equate to 138 vehicles per hour, which is only about half that number. Would the Minister like to clarify the point he was making?

Deputy G.W.J. de Faye:

No, I am not entirely sure that I would either. The figure that I have quoted on this document delivered to me does state, as I read it - and I have to say to the Connétable I may have misread this document - that the current flow Mont Felard southbound from my understanding is 380 vehicles per hour.

4. Deputy D.W. Mezbourian of St. Lawrence :

I spent some time at the Planning Office on Friday looking at a report that was prepared in which a great deal of space was given to looking at traffic queue lengths. Would the Minister explain to the House please, why traffic queue lengths are not taken into consideration by his department?

Deputy G.W.J. de Faye:

Essentially, as I believe it, traffic queue lengths are unreliable and not a very helpful source of information as opposed to traffic flows, which I am sure many Members will know. They will have often seen the cables laid across the road that are a very accurate recording of not only numbers of vehicles, but give an indication of speed of vehicles, and that is a far more useful tool rather than sending members of my department out with tape measures at various times of the day in the hope that they might be able to run the tape to the end of the queue before it moves.  [Laughter]

5. The Connétable of St.Lawrence:

The figure that I have now written down and calculated gives me even more cause for concern because 380 vehicles per hour works out at a little over 9,000 vehicles in 24 hours whereas I was told 6,200 vehicles by the department only within the last week or 2.  I would be grateful if the Minister would investigate the source of these figures and try and be a little bit more ... well maybe the figures he gave us are accurate, but his department needs to be more accurate in total, so that we are given the correct information. I am concerned at the moment, as you can imagine, about road safety factors which, I was investigating before a recent accident incident on the main road

in St. Lawrence and I really need to have some accurate figures. I am afraid that it

does not help to be given figures that vary quite ...

The Bailiff :

Supplementary question, please.

The Connétable of St. Lawrence :

The question is would the Minister kindly confirm that he will make sure that I am supplied with correct figures, please?

Deputy G.W.J. de Faye:

It seems that I have misled the entire House as well as the Connétable of St. Lawrence . Clearly it would not be wise to multiply that figure of 380 by 24 because I very much doubt that at 4 a.m. in the morning 380 vehicles per hour are travelling through his Parish. I think I should communicate to the Connétable that I rather suspect that that figure for 380 vehicles per hour refers to the peak time figure between 8 a.m. and 9 a.m. I can offer some degree of comfort that that figure probably does not pertain on an hour by hour basis and, of course, I caution any Member to simply pick a peak time figure and multiply it by 24 to develop any concerns about traffic in their own Parishes.

3.10.7   Deputy P.N. Troy :

Could I ask perhaps that the Minister submits this information in the format of a

written question, because this would really have been best submitted as a written question?

The Bailiff :

I think that was a point made by the Minister himself, but the Minister is not in a position to dictate how a question is put, I am afraid.