Traffic improvements
What issues are we tackling?
- Congestion primarily occurs on busy days when ferry traffic is required to check-in via Phoenix Yard and share the limited road space in the town centre, with other users including the floating bridge traffic.
- The revised proposals retain the key principles established with the 2006 East Cowes Regeneration Masterplan and 2017 consented scheme of removing ferry traffic from the town centre. In future, embarking and disembarking ferry traffic will use Well Road rather than lower York Avenue, avoiding any need to travel through the town centre. Access to check-in for ferry traffic will be automated and simplified, removing the existing confusion and conflicts with access to the floating bridge and other users of the town centre.
- The yard capacity has been increased to ensure that space is available to accommodate early arrivals and high-volume days, such as the Isle of Wight Festival. Combined with the use of advanced check-in and lane allocation technology, as well as the provision of additional check-in booths, this will ensure that waiting at check-in is significantly reduced and the need for queuing on the local roads is removed, even on busy days.
- Increased space within the marshalling yard and changes to the linkspan configuration will allow simultaneous disembarkation and embarkation, speeding up the changeover and improving service reliability. The additional space will also allow disembarking traffic to queue on site prior to exiting onto the public highway. This will limit delays during disembarkation and improve service reliability regardless of any other delays on the public highway, including negotiating the Dover Road roundabout and the signalised pedestrian crossing opposite Waitrose.
How we’re resolving ferry-related traffic use of Old Road
We understand that any use of Old Road by ferry-related traffic is a particularly key concern for residents, so we have been carrying out thorough traffic surveys to understand how vehicles travelling on our ferries are using Old Road. Our surveys have shown that, on average, two disembarking vehicles per crossing were found to turn left at the Dover Road roundabout, which then leads up to Old Road. We do not know if these vehicles made an onward journey to Old Road specifically, or stopped at Waitrose or the Esplanade, however, we fully understand the impact this has on the community and want to continue to reduce this number as much as possible. Within our proposals, we are taking forward the following measures:
- There will be clear signage from York Avenue to direct ferry traffic to the new check-in off Castle Street. Embarking traffic arrives in smaller platoons up to an hour before their crossing and, with the improved check-in arrangements, we do not expect any queuing on Castle Street to occur, even on busy days. Access to Waitrose via Well Road will therefore remain unaffected and the need for local customers of the store to use Old Road to avoid the roundabout will disappear.
- Our proposals will improve the efficiency of ferry traffic moving around the town overall and, specifically, remove the need for long queues on the approaches and exit roads. This will ensure that the alternative of rat-running through Old Road becomes redundant.
- As Castle Street and Old Road are public roads, we are not in a position to ban left turns and are mindful that local residents and customers of Red Funnel may still wish to go home via the most appropriate route. However, the exit junction onto Castle Street has been carefully designed to limit the ability for traffic to turn left and prevent large vehicles (such as HGVs) from turning left. Explicit signage will make it clear that all through traffic will be required to turn right.
- We’re in discussion with Island Roads to improve pedestrian facilities and explore further traffic calming measures on Old Road.
- We will also consider additional management measures as part of the Terminal Operations Plan to prevent any use of Old Road, including advance real-time signs and traffic signal management.
