Second Accident in 6 months at Mill Lane

Local Liberal Democrats have expressed fury at the failure of the council to implement their own plans to provide a traffic light controlled TOUCAN crossing at the Mill Lane Junction on Maidenhead Road, after a second child was run over at the accident blackspot on Thursday night.

The last serious accident here was in September last year. Mill Lane Junction has been recognised as an accident blackspot for years and is the third worst accident blackspot in Berskshire for cyclists.

"I've been calling for improvements at the Mill Lane roundabout ever since being elected. This is the second child run over at this junction since September, so far the only response from the council has been the temporary installation of a speed activated sign and an e-mail in the past few days from the Tory Lead Member complaining about me describing this most recent accident as avoidable."
says Cllr Amy Tisi, Lib Dem, Clewer East.

The junction was scheduled for safety improvements in 2018-19 as part of the council's Cycling Action Plan. A Toucan traffic light controlled crossing was supposed to be installed, however the work was not undertaken and it is unclear what happened to the £67,000 allocated to the project. Famously in the run up to elections in 2019 the council spent £100,000 on lamp post banners and a promo video, more recently the council has allocated £850,000 to repave the area around Castle Hill to make it look prettier and has funded a new pedestrian crossing just 100m from an existing pedestrian crossing in Alma Road.

"It just seems the council keeps getting its priorities wrong, choosing to undertake all sorts of unneccessary vanity projects, whilst failing to fund important safety improvements like the Mill Lane Toucan Crossing. It's not clear how the crossing in Alma Road has been given priority over sorting out the Mill Lane Junction which is an accident blackspot, but in any case decisions should be based on objective evidence, on which basis it is hard to undestand why Mill Lane is not the top priority."
says Karen Davies, who is a ward councillor for Mill Lane.

Lib Dems will continue to campaign for the much needed crossing at Mill Lane.

• Click here to join our "Get Mill Lane Done!" campaign.