From a different era of Health & Safety.
Tag Archives: Weymouth
Rodwell Relief Road, 1991
Having built the A354 Weymouth Town Centre Relief Road in the mid 1980s, and intending to extend it north as the Weymouth Relief Road, laurels couldn’t be rested on. Things turned south, as proposals were made to lay a similarly big road across the old Portland Railway through Rodwell — now instead the lovely, calm, green Rodwell rail trail walking and cycling path, thankfully!
Weymouth Relief Road: Non-technical Summary, 1994
The zombie Weymouth Relief Road at least provides a nice illustration of how council comms developed over the decades, from the spartan monochrome typo-filled typewriter texts of the 1970s and 80s, through the gaudy desktop published factsheets of the 1990s and more cleverly designed leaflets of the 2000s to today’s website.
Innovative schemes at Westham Roundabout, 1998
It seems that in 1998, presumably in response to 1996’s National Cycling Strategy, the DfT were trying out “innovative schemes” as they do every decade or so in order to put off doing things that have actually been shown to work. The council volunteered Weymouth’s Westham Roundabout, a busy junction between the Town Centre Relief Road and the main road to Portland, for a cycle lane to be painted around the edge. On the carriageway, of course, not done properly like the Dutch would do. Today the Rodwell Rail Trail ends at this junction, but the opportunity to do something truly great for cycling here was passed up again when the roundabout was converted to a complex high-capacity signal-controlled cross ahead of the 2012 Olympics.
Note the Echo’s particularly absurd transport mode tribalism fail: “positive discrimination”.
Improved road links for Weymouth & Portland: route options (1991)
From the many decades spent drawing and redrawing Weymouth relief roads. One of those killed off by the new realism, Weymouth’s hosting 2012 Olympic events meant that something like the Orange route eventually did get built (but scaled back to single carriageway and with slightly better attempts to make it an actual relief road rather than the typical 1980s pump more traffic in road).
Pedestrians at bay
Well this one amused me. Council build big new urban road, take no account of pedestrians in designing it. But pedestrians want to continue walking to where they want to go, so do. Arms race of anti-pedestrian defences ensues.
It must be from somewhere around 1988-90ish.
Highways and byways in Dorset 