Long term local traffic study in a UK parish council - the Kibworth story

Objectives

Kibworth is a small village split in two by the busy A6, and one of the few villages in the area without a bypass. As well as the effects of the high volume of traffic on the main road, regular congestion on the main road from choke points or accidents encourages drivers to seek alternative ‘pass-through’ (or ‘rat-run’) routes through the village. This unwelcome traffic affects the local school and nursery as well as the safety on the local roads. 

In addition, like many rural villages in the UK today, there are plans for new housing developments that will add strain to the existing road and social infrastructure. Having baseline data to use to test developers’ planning applications, and to monitor the impact of new estates, gives the Parish Council a stronger voice in planning reviews.

While Parish Councils are not responsible for traffic matters, the effects of that traffic are important to local residents. Using Telraam data the Kibworth parish council decided to get the evidence of specific issues they could raise with the Highways team at the county council to try and secure greater investment.

Our Role

Telraam worked with the parish council to identify an administrator who was then trained to install and manage the network on an ongoing basis. This local admin was best placed to select the locations to monitor and find volunteers to host the devices, and could therefore run the network without requiring any additional outside support, or cost.

Outcome

The data collection is still going on, but the data is proving useful in making a case for investment and in reviewing local planning applications for developments. This baseline data can be used to evaluate developers’ plans, and to review the impact of such housing developments on the existing local infrastructure. The plan is to further expand this network to cover more locations over the next 12 months, and have an even better understanding of local traffic patterns and issues. 

It will also then be possible, by comparing data from before and after, to monitor the impact of any interventions that will be carried out by the County Council and demonstrate their effectiveness and the benefits they have brought to the village of Kibworth.

What our client says

“From day one, these devices started delivering quality data and meaningful insights about the local traffic and transport situation which went well beyond subjective opinions of 'traffic is bad'. Now it became possible to see just how bad it was. 

With more large-scale housing developments in the pipeline, the hope is that data from the Telraam devices will present a meaningful way to counter the inevitable narrative that further housing and associated motor vehicle movements can be sustained or mitigated. It is obvious to everyone living locally that they can't, but it is very hard to make that case based on gut feeling alone.” - Network administrator, Kibworth Beauchamp Telraam Network