What are you doing about all the weeds this year?

Ask the Contract Director!

We understand that as members of the public, you probably have a lot of burning questions regarding the roads around Buckinghamshire. Well, we're giving you the opportunity to get your questions answered by Transport for Buckinghamshire's Contract Director!

This is the 10th blog post that we have produced focusing on the questions that you have been asking the most, this week we are looking at:

What are you doing about all the weeds this year?

Buckinghamshire County Council has had to balance revenue budgets over recent years. This has required consideration of numerous competing priorities, including our statutory duty to ensure the highway remains safe and serviceable, and also tackling priorities identified through customer feedback. Because of this, routine weed control (with the exception of noxious weeds) has not been carried out with any kind of regularity over the past four years. 

Unchecked weed growth isn't just unsightly though - it can also lead to accelerated carriageway deterioration and can inhibit the efficient flow of surface water into and through drainage systems. 

In recognition of these longer term effects, TfB has been given an additional £500,000 to spend on routine weed treatment across the county in 2019. 

Routine weed treatment is a  programme of three cycles of routine spraying that will be undertaken across primary footway locations, including hardstandings, kerbs and channels. This equates to 3,408km of kerbline/channel and 3,055km of footway per treatment. 

This spraying will take place in April to combat early season growth, then in June to combat peak season growth and finally in September to combat secondary regrowth. Timings will be adjusted dependent on weather and growth levels. Spraying during high winds and/or heavy rainfall will be avoided as effectiveness is reduced significantly. 

We will be using a chemical that is a non-residual contact herbicide. 

We also have a statutory obligation to control the noxious and injurious weeds on the highway network across the county and this will continue as normal throughout the year. 

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Why are the traffic lights only letting two cars through?

Ask the Contract Director!

We understand that as members of the public, you probably have a lot of burning questions regarding the roads around Buckinghamshire. Well, we're giving you the opportunity to get your questions answered by Transport for Buckinghamshire's Contract Director!

This is the 9th blog post that we have produced focusing on the questions that you have been asking, this week we are looking at:

Why are the traffic lights only letting two cars through?

There are currently over 200 traffic signal sites in Buckinghamshire. These are a mixture of traffic signal controls, from large junctions to pedestrian crossings.

All traffic signals rely on sensors that react to vehicles and pedestrians. Some of these sensors are controlled by their own internal control system, whilst others are coordinated from County Hall in Aylesbury on a centralised system, connected by telephone communications.

Throughout the day the signal timings at each junction are varied according to demand. This allows us to control traffic levels across the county. Whilst this has been done for many years, the systems we use are gradually becoming smarter and more effective, especially at times of high demand. Strategies can be set to bias the timings for a particular route or main road, and coordination is automated to determine the best signal timings for a group of junctions considered together. This can be why you sometimes feel you are being kept waiting at a red signal for no apparent reason! 

For example; If there's a red signal and on the other side of the signal is a queue of traffic, we don't want to allow cars through just to join the queue! This means we might make a red signal last a little longer, and only let through a small number of cars each time, to reduce congestion and help the traffic to flow a little better. When the traffic eases up, we can let more cars through at a time. 

In addition to this, we utilise CCTV to watch the road network for congestion and accidents. When these things occur on the network, we intervene with the signals where necessary, to try to control the traffic building up. 

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Why won't the Watermead bollards stay up?

Ask the Contract Director!

We understand that as members of the public, you probably have a lot of burning questions regarding the roads around Buckinghamshire. Well, we’re giving you the opportunity to get your questions answered by Transport for Buckinghamshire's Contract Director!

This is the 8th blog post that we have produced focusing on the questions that you have been asking, this week we are looking at:

Why won't the Watermead bollards stay up?

Recently, we refurbished some automatic bollards at Lark Vale, Watermead. These bollards create a restricted access route and make sure the route can only be used by buses. Unfortunately since they were installed, the bollards have failed several times. This has happened for a number of reasons and has caused a lot of frustration to the local residents. 

The system that was originally in place for the bollards was outdated, having been in use for over ten years. This meant that maintenance of the bollards became increasingly difficult and so they were becoming very unreliable.

Using our 2018/19 budget, we were able to refurbish the bollards and install new technology for the system to operate on. This new system utilises the use of ground detectors, card readers and card swipe systems. 

The bollards during refurbishing works.

So how does the new system work?

Currently, bus drivers should drive the bus over the ground detector, and get their access pass card detected by the card reader, which is mounted on a pole on the drivers side on the approach. The reader then 'grants' access and the bollards lower into the ground. Once the bus has passed safely through, and the ground detectors are clear, the bollards rise back up.


How are we dealing with the system when it fails?

Aside from the vandalism incident, which caused the system to fail, they would only fail for safety reasons. For example, if a bus drives too close before the bollards are retracted, they will remain lowered. This has happened on several occasions now, and we are working closely with the bus team to make sure drivers are fully trained on how to use the bollards correctly. Each time a bus trips out the bollard system, a member of our team has to attend the site to manually reset the bollards, and we do this as soon as we can. 

However, whilst we originally thought this was the only problem, we have now discovered that the system is occasionally failing for other reasons that are requiring ongoing investigation. As a result, we are working closely with our contractors, ATG, who are currently investigating this as an urgent priority. 

Until we have resolved this issue, we will continue to go and reset the bollards as and when we need to.


What else are we doing?

In addition to looking into how we can rectify this ongoing issue, we are also seeing if we can implement two changes to the bollards - a manual reset button and remote monitoring. 

The manual reset button would mean we could give the Parish Council the ability to reset the bollards themselves. This would mean they could potentially be reset more quickly than having to wait for someone from Transport for Buckinghamshire to attend the site. 

Having remote monitoring would mean that we could raise and lower the bollards from our offices, so we wouldn't have to attend the site and again, the issue could be rectified more quickly. 


We understand resident's frustration with the bollards at Lark Vale and we are aware that it is an ongoing issue. Please be assured that this is a priority and we are working to resolve the problems as soon as we can. 


***EDIT - FURTHER UPDATE***

After some thorough investigation, we have been able to determine that there are issues with the card reader wiring; the wires need to be replaced. This has taken longer to determine than expected because it's an issue to do with the ducting - pipe lines that are carrying the electrical wiring beneath the ground. It is suspected that these have become either damaged or blocked, which is preventing the bollards from working. 

Due to the scale of work required, we are looking at different options that both maximise the effectiveness of the repair as well as being cost efficient. 

Why aren't we leaving the bollards up and resetting them more regularly?

Due to the card reader failing, not only does this cause the bollards to fail, but in most cases this would actually cause the bollards to remain up. This happened at our Fairford Leys site and is not something we want to repeat at Lark Vale, as it would cause more issues - the buses would not be able to get through because the card reader wouldn't work! As a result of this, it has been decided to leave the bollards down until further notice. 

We are currently working with our supply chain partner to get these issues resolved as soon as possible and will continue to share updates as and when we have them. 

We know this situation is frustrating but we thank you for your patience and hope you understand that this isn't straightforward for us to resolve. 

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