Temporary signals set up at the Studland Road junction to help keep drivers safe will stay in place while the Sandbanks Ferry is repaired.
Temporary lights were put into action last week following an extraordinary Studland Parish Council meeting, where Dorset Council Cllr Ray Bryan and Cllr Cherry Brooks listened to residents’ and parish councillors’ concerns that increased traffic at the A351 / B3351 junction would lead to a serious collision.
Highway engineers have now confirmed that, following an initial trial of temporary lights being used from 2pm to 6pm on the A351 junction with the B3351 to Studland to help control the flow of traffic and keep drivers safe, the signals will remain in place until the ferry is back in service.
Cllr Ray Bryan, Dorset Council’s portfolio holder for Highways, Travel and Environment, said:
“We have deployed a specialist set of lights at the junction, which has let traffic travelling on the A351 to flow in both directions, followed by a period of ‘stop’ time to allow drivers from Studland safely out on to the road. This set-up has really helped the situation.
“We’ve adjusted the timings and vehicle actuation and, from Thursday (8 August), we will be stepping up the use of the lights to 24-hours-a-day.
“We’d like to ask drivers for their continued patience and to plan their journeys ahead as delays are possible. We are doing everything we can to safely manage the increased traffic at this busy junction.”
Sandbanks Ferry is a private enterprise and Dorset Council has no authority over the company or involvement with the ferry service.
The Bournemouth-Swanage Motor Road and Ferry Act 1923 sets out the exact terms of operation, including the service stopping to carry out necessary repairs or machinery works, as has happened at this time.
The company has been keeping its website up to date with the progress of these repairs and everyone involved has is working incredibly hard to return the service as quickly as possible.
Dorset Council, as the highways authority for the Isle of Purbeck, is doing everything
possible to mitigate the impact of the lack of ferry service on local roads.
Should an occasion arise where the temporary signals make the situation worse, highways operatives are nearby and can turn them off.
Update – 8 August
Following concerns expressed online, discussions have been held today between councillors and highway managers and it has been agreed to continue with plans for 24/7 lights for a trial period of four days. Traffic conditions will be monitored hourly by the council’s traffic team over this time and inform any further decision.
The two-way lights give priority to the main road traffic on the A351 – with both directions running at the same time. The main road traffic is then stopped when drivers are detected at the Studland peninsula signal.
The lights have been put in place because drivers were not following the advised one-way system for people leaving Studland to travel through Swanage – aimed at keeping traffic moving by reducing right-hand turns.
Frustrated drivers, insisting on turning right onto the A351, were taking chances and putting all road-users at risk.
We are doing what we can to balance keeping our roads safe with keeping essential roads flowing.
24hrs a day is ridiculous!
I fail to see how a rush of people are exiting the beach from Studland at 8am in the morning!.
However, local people do require free and easy passage along the A351 Wareham-Swanage to get to work.
This decision will inevitably cause extra traffic and delays at this peak time.
This is madness! I use this road every day and there has not been a problem. These lights will cause more tail backs and driver frustration! I will be held up at 9pm on way home from work with no traffic coming out of studland road. Are the council just doing this to wind us up?
The light are vechile activated…. They only work when vechiles are detected… No traffic on studland road light stay ref
I drive through morning and evening to get to and from work while the ferry is off. The traffic flow has been fairly normal for the time of year – the junction in question is always difficult, but the traffic volume doesn’t appear to be significantly higher than in other years. Adding lights is going to create congestion, not solve a problem – there will be more traffic queuing through the village, lowering air quality and creating a hazard to pedestrians. This strikes me as a response to a problem that doesn’t exist, at least not at the times when people are driving to and from work.
hahahaha never seen any thing so stupid in all my life
What is wrong with you people in Dorset Council !! Have you ever been to Corfe No I didn’t think so !!
You are making it impossible for us to be able to leave our home’s..
Totally disgusting
Why not divert traffic from studland back through Swanage? Current measures are stranding people in Swanage due to massive tailbacks. The town is being hit hard already with the ferry being out at this critical time for businesses. Many people fear businesses going under and the council are making it harder to get in and out.
There is an advisory one way system for traffic from Swanage / studland to return to corfe/ Wareham on the A351 NOT STUDLAND ROAD. but people don’t read the signs/ ignore them
‘This set up has really helped the situation’ – in whose world? There has been nothing but negative impact with this scheme, with long tailbacks in both directions along the A351. Monitoring has been insufficient and too slow to react, causing residents and visitors alike great inconvenience. Please reconsider directing all Wareham-bound traffic in Studland via Swanage, keeping them to the main road and keeping it better flowing.
This fundamentally does not work. My wife sat in traffic queuing back past Harmans Cross when travelling to Bournemouth at 3.30pm last Sunday afternoon. A similar que was tailed back for two miles on the Studland road and a further due back to Stoborough in the opposite direction. It is bad enough that Swanage and Studland are subject to major disruption and loss of visitors with the ferry being suspended. This will kill visiting the Purbecks who will want to come back and sit in hours worth of unnecessary ques. I commute to Poole from Swanage everyday of the week and this week has been perfectly fine other than congestion through Sandford as usual. This is creating a major problem for an issue that doesn’t need fixing. Please, please do not put this in place for 24hours 7 days a week.
This is total madness.
Do any of the people who have decided to put these TL in place live in Swanage or Corfe??? Have any of you travelled the route since the T lights are in place??? It’s causing no-end of tailbacks and traffic is stationary rather than before the lights it was moving – albeit slowly, but it was at least moving.
I urge you to reconsider
Thankyou.
Madness I can understand 2pm till 6 but not 24hrs; makes one wonder how you came to such a crazy idea
So Studland PC get what they want – were Corfe Castle & Church Knowle PCs involved? Church Knowle road is impossible to exit. Tourist season will be over by mid September so why till the ferry returns? The lights are badly placed on the edge of the road. Traffic stops across the junction into Corfe Castle square blocking it completely. Residents from the Isle of Purbeck living south of this junction are being penalised.
The lights cause more of a problem than they solve. At 16:00 tonight the queue from Wareham towards the lights was over a mile. There were 4 cars waiting on the Studland Road – yes 4 cars. It’s pretty simple, just direct people to drive from the beaches in Studland via Swanage; if they ignore the signs, they can sit in a queue. There is no need for lights.
Why?! This is so badly thought out, the queues into Corfe Castle both ways are miles long, the village is full of standing traffic. There is absolutely no need for these lights, they make a problem when there is not one. Please reconsider this ridiculous ‘solution’.
why no comment from the ill advised council,? as normal wont listen to people
Just another thought!
With chain ferry out of action, the main route for emergency vehicles travelling to and from Swanage-Wareham-Poole hospital is currently the A351 through Corfe Castle.
With these lights in place 24 hours/day traffic ques will regularly form under and around the castle (from the Studland junction to Corfe Castle village.
To my mind this will hamper the movement of emergency vehicles trying to pass stationary vehicles held in the que on a very difficult stretch of road on a hazardous bend whilst meeting oncoming traffic being released the other way when lights turn green!
Potential for road traffic collision?
Think you have many upset Swanage residents . I don’t know how much planning went into this but will be very surprised if you don’t find that this is not a solution to this situation. Maybe you should drive the route with lights and without lifts and test the difference ?!
Please do not inflict this upon us. Last Saturday afternoon at 5pm when normally, even during the height of the summer, us locals would be able to drive straight into Swanage, the queue started just past the Stoborough roundabout. The lights do not work. ?
If the lights are timed appropriately, it should ease traffic flow and not add to congestion. The creation of greater tailbacks than normal is probably due to more traffic than usual having to use this route in and out of Swanage. If the lights are to blame, it can only be due to traffic from Studland causing the lights to change more frequently than is appropriate, perhaps also with the main road lights remaining at red for longer than is needed for the vehicles from Studland to clear the junction.
I’d suggest some improvement to the light sequencing.
As for the concerns expressed about the lights being in place 24/7, if the level of traffic is low enough in “off-peak” periods that the lights are not considered necessary, then when the lights do change it won’t be particularly disruptive, will it? (After all, there are lights for pedestrians in Corfe and this stops the traffic on the main road regularly already). The lights will only be on red at the junction if there is traffic on the Studland road needing to exit; the rest of the time it will be as if the lights were not even there, so what is the problem?
Actually the lights turn to red even when there’s no traffic waiting to come out! And the problem is that fir me as one example, my commuting times have increased by an hour a day and I dint leave purbeck in a weekend as I can’t face it! So yes it’s affecting a number of people’s quality of life. Do you commute?
So here I am again !!!is anyone monitoring the chaos today ? impossible to go about our daily lives as roads at a STANDSTILL SORT IT OUT !!!!We need to go to work we need to go to collect grandchildren to look after we need to be able to drive from A to B Grrrrrrr.
This is now causing dangerous situations with drivers from the studland road driving through the red light to turn onto the A351. It’s happened to me a number of times when I’m driving home in the evening when I have to slam my breaks on. Also If a driver wants to turn right into studland road from Corfe they hold the traffic up too. This is absolute madness. I’ve lived here a long time and seen ferry off, roadworks etc. but it’s never been this bad. Swallow your pride and give in please? It’s a bad and dangerous idea! Oh and I expect air quality is pretty bad all around that area now!