Residents around the area of The Green will have had a letter recently informing them of work starting after the Bank Holiday (Tuesday 28th August).

This is the first part of the long awaited improvements to the Station Road/High Street  junction and the pavements by The Green. This will:

• make crossing from The Boot to The Coop easier for pedestrians
• reduce the speed of vehicles turning onto Station Road
• make the pavements outside The Coop safer by widening them  and removing the slope
• tidy up the area a little which has a hotch-potch of dropped kerbs and difficult surfaces

A zebra crossing is not being installed yet as permission must be sought from The Secretary of State which can take some time and the Parish Council is working with groups who rightly have concerns about the setting of The Green. The proposed shallowing of the curve for parking improvements are currently on hold pending additional funding.

Temporary traffic lights will be required as will an area to store material – in an area as busy and sensitive as our Green this will never be ideal, so please bear with any temporary inconvenience in light of the future benefits to the village for our community.

The letter delivered to residents and businesses is as follows:

Dear Sir or Madam

STATION ROAD & THE GREEN, HISTON – JUNCTION REALIGNMENT, FOOTWAY

WIDENING & PROVISION OF ZEBRA CROSSING.

Cambridgeshire County Council has been working with Histon [& Impington] Parish Council to develop a scheme that will provide a number of improvements for pedestrians crossing Station Road and The Green.

The road width of the Station Road junction will be reduced by relocating the kerb lines so that pedestrians will have a reduced road width to cross and they will also have better visibility of approaching traffic. The narrower junction layout will have the added benefit of reducing the speed of vehicles turning into Station Road.

The footway on the south side of The Green between Station Road and Brook Close will be widened by 0.5m. The long dropped kerb along this length will be lifted to the same level as the other kerbs so that the footway will no longer slope towards the road.

It is intended that a Zebra crossing will be installed across The Green by Balfour Beatty Living Places (BBLP) at a later date. As the green has Town & Village Green status we are currently working with BBLP to obtain permission from the Secretary of State to install the lighting columns for the Zebra crossing.

Until we install the columns for the Zebra crossing and the power supplies to them we will need to leave a temporary footway surface on the areas of footway that we have widened. Whilst this is not ideal it is the most cost effective way of undertaking the work and also avoids unnecessary excavation in a new footway surface.

The work will commence on Tuesday August 26th and take approximately 4 weeks. Most of the work will necessitate the use of temporary traffic signals. We appreciate that the work and the use of temporary traffic lights will cause some inconvenience which we will endeavour to keep the minimum but would ask for your patience during this time.

If you have any queries in relation to this work please contact me in the first instance.  However I will be unavailable to answer questions between August 25th so please contact my colleague Stuart Rushby using the phone number given in the letter header [0345 045 5212] or by e-mail: Stuart.rushby@cambridgehsire.gov.uk

Yours faithfully

Karen Lunn

Project Engineer

Local Projects

Local Infrastructure and Street Management