Traffic is one of the subjects that comes up in conversations about new places wherever we work. Roads are often historic, town centres were not designed for the volume of cars that use them today, and people need to drive for work, school and daily life. These are real pressures, and they are ones we think about carefully whenever we are creating somewhere new.
When we speak to people in Stamford, those concerns are front and centre. Congestion, road safety, and what new homes might mean for the roads you use every day, are completely understandable challenges, and they are questions we have been working through carefully over a long period of time.
People in Stamford have been talking for many years about the need for a new road to the north of the town. Stamford North and Monarch Park have been planned with that road in mind. The council have secured and agreed its delivery across both areas. The new Main Street runs from Ryhall Road to Casterton Road, giving people the option to use it rather than going through the town centre to access the A1. The modelling demonstrates that the Main Street functions as intended and consumes the traffic from Stamford North, while also providing increased resilience and benefit to Stamford's transport network.
The testing was done on a conservative basis. It assumed no additional shift toward walking, cycling or bus use, even though significant investment in those options is planned. The numbers are not reliant on assumptions that residents will make a significant shift toward sustainable transport.
Alongside this, we are contributing funding to the council to support transport improvements in the local area. The council will decide how that money is spent. The agreed schemes it can go toward are traffic calming on Arran Road, improvements to the crossing at Sidney Farm Lane, and works on Little Casterton Road and Radcliffe Road. It is up to the council how they allocate the funds between these.
As the plans develop, there will be more detail and more opportunities to look at how roads, streets and paths will work in practice. We will keep sharing what we know and keep listening to the people who use these routes every day.