I write to offer prayers and sympathy after the tragic death of a Chattenden man at Four Elms Hill, another death on a road that Medway Council readily admit is at its capacity.
It is important to remember that we the residents of the Hoo Peninsula have constantly echoed our feelings that the A228 is simply not designed to accommodate the amount of traffic now using it and simply how dangerous the road is becoming each day. With further commercial expansion at Kingsnorth and Grain, and with Medway Council’s plan to ‘unlock the potential of the peninsula’ by building another possible 12,000 houses and with very little positive information on infrastructure to accommodate such plans.
How many times will residents be cut off using the main road to the peninsula in times of an emergency?
Too often will the police stand by and let HGVs attempt a small B-road through Cooling and High Halstow, blocking it at a time thousands of people are attempting to get home, resulting in people spending hours in their cars, some with your babies and children, some being senior citizens, some even being forced to walk home or sleep in their cars.
How are emergency vehicles meant to cope with this gridlock? Babies won’t wait for a traffic free night to be born. Heart attacks and other serious illnesses can happen at any time. Experience has shown many times that the Peninsula becomes parallelised when incidents happen on our one and only road. Why after years of promises is there no protocol to inform large distribution companies on the peninsula to delay HGVs leaving depot? Why no signage warning HGVs no access to the Peninsula before they try to come on through unaccommodating roads? Do we need more or better enforcement of the speed limit on Peninsula way?
I have asked for a meeting with Kent Police to make sure they understand how isolated residents feel when our main road is blocked, and when lorries gridlock the only other option, the B-road at Cooling. Is it time for width and weight restrictions on that B-road? What if any protocol is in place for emergency services to access and leave the Peninsula when the main roads are blocked due to an emergency? I will spend today and the next couple of days trying to get answers to these questions. Not least why Medway will not divulge plans for improvements.
No enforcement of the speed limit which is almost universally ignored. No serious attempt by police to shut down regular (weekly!) boy racers who come over the hill at anything between 60 and 80. Minimum equirement is new 39 limit and static cameras to enforce it, But actually a whole new road layout is required. I have lived adjacent to this crossing for 35 years. Four deaths on it in that time and countless near misses.
I cannot understand why when one side of the four elms hill is blocked they cannot form a two way system on the other side.
I cannot be that difficult to direct traffic to a row way carefully passing each other on the other side of the road
What about the proposed railway ? Surely more freight going by rail means less lorries on the roads, which aren’t meant to take them . This is just crazy, too much building, too little infrastructure and marshy ground….
Leave the Hoo peninsula alone, if anything needs building its doctors surgeries , schools etc
My partner worked a 12hr shift, left work at 6pm and didnt get home until 1.30am!! He was already exhausted when he left work and I was terrified that he would fall sleep whilst driving. We have only just moved to this area and it is absolutely ridiculous and dangerous to only have one main road in and out.
Wrote to council a couple years ago asking for speed cameras to be installed along tcat stretch of the A228 and the reply was that the accident statistics did not warrant the installation of them. How more many lives until the target is reached and they can rest easy knowing they have reached their target before spending what in effect is all council tax payers money but we don’t get to decide where it is spent.
Thinks are getting out of hand in the Hoo area can you ask council and police refused to move lorry parked on footpaths on the Ratcliffe Highway I have telephone police three times about this and told me it’s not a problem has at that time because there’s no person walking on the highway that what a police man told me siting in his car looking at them russ
The whole road from Four Elms to Grain should be turned into a proper Motorway. Pedestrians should cross using bridges or subways. Put in the infrastructure before housing is expanded. Let’s have some Doctors, a hospital and a lorry park with showers and toilets too. Come on Medway and raise your game.
Lets not turn the roads into something like you suggest Andy. it will only increase houses being built alongside industry which with people either commuting or working locally will not decrease the scenes of fatalities and accidents but only increase them
Speed cameras do nothing on the 228. I live in Grain where there are speed cameras only to have HGV Lorries sitting close behind dangerously. The Cooling road is also very dangerous going into a single lane in places, however there are no signs stating its suitability. Medway has failed time and time again thinking about it own councillors and getting what they want where they live. The road in Grain since I’ve been here is in a bad state of repair and urgent needs attention instead of cheap patching. The road desperately needs widening and possibly need converting into a dual carriageway with under passages or bridges for pedestrians. New housing should not happen until the lost and forgotten Peninsula is addressed by the greed of Medway
My husband was stuck in the traffic. We live in Grain. He parked at the barracks at 9pm and finally arrived home at 4.10am.
A couple in a car close by had a 5 day old baby with them.
I am hoping that speed cameras on the hill would be a consideration by the council, as these needless accidents and fatalities
MUST stop.
The peninsula must never be cut off in such a manner again.
It’s the same in cliffe and cliffe woods. One incident can cause utter chaos. The roads are B roads and not suitable for the amount of heavy traffic that uses them. If the B2000 is blocked, everything including lorries then take to the country road routes which, in turn get blocked because of the narrowness of the lanes. Lorries should not be allowed to use these routes when there is an incident. It’s pure madness.
Hi Ron, you have seen my correspondence to Medway Council and to Kelly tolhurst, I support you and the community in getting something done to eradicate this terrible situation that is not and does not get resolved by the parties in office to do so.
The national speed limit needs to be scrapped off four elms hill,
Dropping down to 40 each way.
Would also help with speed cameras installed in chattenden by the garages in both directions.
The 40 limit is constantly being abused by motorists,
If nothing ever gets done it will only get worse.
Another tragedy on a road where the speed and volume of traffic is inappropriate to the other activities there. Very sad indeed. However, the police could have easily of averted the chaos that ensurd; as you suggest, had they prevented the HGVs from using a wholly inappropriate route. But, also, the police could have opened the second carriageway to 2 way traffic. Yes, these measures would of absorbed manpower, but surely that is why the police have Specials and why there are the VOSA (?) highway patrols. The A228 was closed for 12 hours – totally unacceptable. Whilst pailing into insignificance when considered against the tragedy of this incident (no only for the family and friends of the man killed, but also the car driver) in our own case, my wife, a Midwife at the madly busy Medway Maritime left work at just after 2100, following an almost 14 hrs shift. I advised her of the situation and suggested she should park in the Liberty Park housing development and then walk up Four Elms Hill where I agreed to meet her in our other car. However, the Sat Nav advised that getting through the lanes would only take one hour even with the delay. After sitting in the lanes near Cooling until nearly 0100 in the morning she finally turned around and did as I suggested and I got her home at about 0130 in the morning. Fortunately she wasn’t at work again at just after 0700 the next morning, the consequences of the tiredness induced by the chaos that the police could have prevented do not bear thinking about.
Completely agree that the infrastructure is not designed to cope for all the thousands of extra housin with only one major route into Hoo and beyond.
My wife finished work at midnight and tried the only other option which was the B roas through Cliffe and cooling and was stuck for hours because of lorries getting stuck on the small winding lanes. She couldn’t walk home so she had no option but to sleep in the car.
Simply not on
I have been a long and original resident of the hoo peninsula and o have watched it changed dramatically and it’s just become a town centre when are medway council going to ever realise the peninsula cannot cope with the housing it has already little own building another 12.000 houses on the peninsula and just one road in and out of the village is just not enough and so medway council need to look at either building another road in out of the village or stop the continuous building out on the peninsula I have left the village this year I moved out of it because of the amount of issues that its being faced with and it’s just not coping and it’s not the same place as it was back in 1991 when i first moved to hoo village and i will not be looking to move back again and as for the four elms death that happened monday it’s with very great sadness that I knew this gentleman brian Durden and he worked with my family for years and I am absolutely devastated for the death of this loving caring gentle giant of a man who will be greatly missed by so many of chattenden and the hoo peninsula and his local football club gillingham football club and so yet another death has happened isn’t it about time .medway council stopped the building out on the hoo peninsula or looked at the infrastructure of the roads in and out of hoo and started to build a second road in and out of the village or find a way that the traffic flow can cope better out on the peninsula as well as all the traffic and work vehicles also that use this only main road in out of hoo peninsula also traffic from high halstow stoke grain allhallows and hoo and that the council looked at building another major road to ease some of the traffic off the A228 four elms hill so that another dead just like the tragic dead of mr durden doesn’t happen again this is absolutely tragic 😥 may you lay to rest brian and sleep tight you will be deeply missed by so many people from your home village chattenden and the hoo peninsula of so many you were known by I truly hope that medway council do something about this road I really do.
It is a simple point that having one road in and out of the villagae and surrounding areas is not enough and about time that the government actually realised this! Why build more houses when the already crumbling roads and safety of the people on the peninsula is already at risk?
Must there be anymore deaths and accidents before the government actually realise this? Will they answer our questions and the answer is?! No they wont! They are not worried about the safety of people and the death toll made by there mistakes! Its about time they stood up and accepted the blame for what they have done!
I don’t think the number of houses even comes into it. The facts are the pedestrian crossing at the top of Kent elms hill has extremely poor lighting. Their should be average speed cameras all along the road. Their are races
In the evening with cars and the police are not interested unless their is a crash, the lighting at the second crossing for the development at Kent elms is brightly lite up yet hardly anyone uses that crossing. I ask you to visit both crossings when dark to evaluate both sets of lighting over the crossing