Great Western Coffee Shop

Its the pedestrian crossing on the Bristol side of Weston Milton station at Corondale road area.

A private meeting was  held late this afternoon(wednesday 22 january)

with local Residents  North Somerset council Pessismion house builders and Network Rail.

Film footage on BBC points west(available for 24 hours only) on the catch up play again thingy and

ITV West, not sure how long the catch up is available from ITV West

Sadly related to a fatality there last year
Questions now being asked why a bridge wasn't built that was part of the original planning application by Persimmon homes.

Sadly at least one well known councillor from the town has already turned this into a political point scoring debate

I was surprised and disappointed that PW didn't ask for a comment from Persimmon.

From what I can tell it seems to be the exception when developers actually do what they are obliged to under planning applications.  Usually they sign up to some benefit to the community and then backpedal on the grounds that there isn't enough money in the development, and it gets dropped.  You'd have thought councils would have got wise to that by now.

On another point, I did notice in the film the student crossing the track wearing headphones.  Surely that is one of the biggest risks these days.  I know there is evidence that too much warning signage can confuse and dilute the message, but I would have thought a sign telling people to remove headphones and actually look rather than be fixated on their phones would be of benefit. (I'm not suggesting that was the cause in this instance, but I would imagine the risk has increased with increased usage of phones for other than making calls.)

With use of headphones, especially the development of 'noise cancelling' ones in recent years, sadly I expect there will be increase in the number of accidental deaths directly caused by them - not just affecting the railways, but also roads as well.

Some local authorities do try an ensure "developers" do what they promise. I was asked some years ago to pull some historical mapping in a case of a developer failing to fulfill their section 106 obligations. The item in question would cost less than the court case was likely to cost, but the local authority felt it had to make a case otherwise everybody would ignore their obligations.

With large developers they probably now think the local authority won't go to court because they don't have the money for legal fees.

Of course if they changed the law so that an undischarged s106 agreement was a charge on the properties that the developer was selling they would soon cough up or they would not be able to sell the houses. 

Announced this afternoon that Network Rail
Gate is to be widened with new anti slip surface - also work to be done so that there is more visibility

The group who campaigned are to keep pushing for a bridge to be built