Like many people, back in January I set myself a New Year’s resolution and if previous years were anything to go by, there was little chance of me keeping to it.
But this year I decided to set up a Facebook page to support my role as local councillor to keep everyone up to date with matters of local interest.
As a regular commuter around the Southern Link, like everyone else I was horrified to see how dangerous sections of the road had become following the completion of the £47million upgrade.
I decided the time was right to utilise my Facebook page and posted a short video taken by a friend at the Ketch Island which demonstrated the potential for serious accidents. Within an hour nearly 1,000 people had viewed the video with many leaving comments supporting my campaign.
Local papers were quickly on to the story and radio stations were asking for interviews. That night the video had registered a mind boggling 50,000 hits and over 1,000 had signed the online petition.
Thank you to everyone who has supported this campaign. I could never have anticipated there would eventually be over 82,000 hits on the video and well over 1,000 signatures to the online petition.
I am pleased the council ultimately responded to our campaign.
Given the inherently poor design of the island and the lack of compliance to national policies for road construction, it was never going to be possible to properly address all the issues but the changes will go some way to improving safety for drivers entering and exiting the island.
However, these changes will in effect largely negate the original intention to create greater road capacity for drivers heading to Powick and Malvern.
For me two questions remain: How was it that the extraordinary design for the Ketch island was approved and implemented in the first place? And why should it have to take a social media campaign to a garner the action that was finally taken?
