There were cheers and jeers at the Guildhall in Kingston last night (Thursday) as a proposal to install a bus gate in a residential street in Surbiton was thrown out by councillors. 

More than 100 protesters, armed with Save our Streets placards, turned up at the Surbiton Neighbourhood Committee meeting to voice their opposition to the recommendation by the council’s highways department to install a bus gate in Thornhill Road. 

They said it would cause rat running and simply displace the traffic to neighbouring streets. 

However residents of Thornhill were dismayed by the council’s decision to drop the plan, and the chair of the committee, Cllr Alison Holt, was berated by residents of Tolworth Road for her proposal – which was adopted – to scrap the temporary traffic barrier at the junction with Fullers Way North, and introduce a no left turn into it at peak times under a new experimental traffic management order. 

“Shameful behaviour, shameful,” said one angry resident, after a meeting which had been heated and vociferous. 

Councillors heard how the decision to introduce a low traffic neighbourhood scheme in Tolworth Road had backfired, causing a huge increase in cars and HGVs on Thornhill Road, and set streets against streets with the proposals it had made to mitigate the impact. 

Measures to discourage non local traffic from using Thornhill Road and others in its vicinity would be taken and the monitoring groups with their street reps, which already meet, would continue to assess the impact of the new ETMO and consider additional measures that could be taken to ease traffic levels in the area.   

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