Highway Matters
On behalf of the parish council, the chairman met with a senior highways engineer from NYCC to discuss various issues, particularly the residents’ perceptions of speeding through the village.
Disappointingly, due to a lack of funding the only way any money might be found for traffic calming would be if Seamer was a proven accident black spot, which fortunately it is not.
It was made clear that the parish council might support any NYCC project to calm traffic using money from the community fund such as humps, village gateway,(like those in Hilton and Maltby), rumble strips or road narrowing at strategic places on Hilton Road or Stokesley Road. All these were rejected for various reasons, the main one being the possibility that in the future the whole cost of maintenance, upgrading or removal might fall on NYCC and for which there would unlikely be any authorisation.
It was pointed out that with the housing developments taking place in surrounding areas that the problem will only get worse in the future. The engineer suggested that we could install the kind of flashing speed warnings similar to those in Hilton and Maltby and to contact the local road safety partnership in order to try and increase the number of police speed checks in the village.
This issue is not closed and the parish council will continue to look for solutions to make the village a safe place to live.