Podcast Pete
speaker
382 appearances
2 recordings
1 series
first heard Jun 2024
last heard Aug 2024
Podcast Pete’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
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Appearances
So just ahead of the Squires Garden Centre on the left-hand side. And more of those high containment curbs a little bit further on down the A25 as the road goes over the River Mole near Castle Gardens. And the planners say that should help cut the risk of any car leaving the road and ending up in the river.
I'm now standing at the Betchworth roundabout, and what you'll realise as a driver is moving from Rygate to this roundabout, and then from here to Dorking, various parts of the A25 have different markings in the middle of the road. Sometimes there are hatchings, and sometimes there are solid white lines.
Well, as you know as a driver, if it's a solid white line in the middle of the road, it means you can't cross it, so no overtaking. Hatchings work in a similar way. They... give the driver a feel that the road is less wide.
And so it reduces the risk of a car overtaking another one, particularly on one of those stretches of road where you can see a little bit further ahead, but also on stretches of the road like the Reigate bends and also the Buckland bends, where it is really dangerous to do so.
What the plans want to do is to make everything a little bit more uniform and to have more white line central hatching markings to be done from Reigate to Betchworth and from Betchworth all the way through to Dorking. And that will, they say, cut the risk of drivers trying those dangerous overtakes. Well, I'm still here at the Betchworth roundabout.
And just before I turned on my recorder, there was a near miss on the roundabout, which is ironic because that's the next thing that I wanted to talk about. Because another idea is to make improvements to the road markings here on this roundabout, including the lane arrows to more clearly show what lane a driver needs to be in when approaching it.
it's particularly coming from Dorking to Rygate which is what I think is the problem because of course you can go left up Pebble Hill you can go straight ahead to Rygate or turn right down Station Road if you were going to the Garden Centre and so on I know one of my passengers has always been keen quite rightly to gently remind me to be in the right hand lane when coming into town from Dorking
There's so many traffic islands, aren't there, from Reigate all the way through to Dorking on the A25, and a lot of them are in various states of design and indeed disrepair as well. So while all this work is going on that I'm talking to you about, they're also going to be ripping out a lot of those pedestrian traffic islands and replacing them and making them safer and more obvious.
Well, I've just pulled in just past the Brockham Lane junction. So picture the scene as you're turning in and out of Brockham Lane, going perhaps down to the village or coming up from the village and you want to turn left to Dorking or more particularly right to Rygate. That is a really nasty, tricky, awful, awkward junction, isn't it?
So what they want to do is to reduce the width of the A25 here, which planners say will make that turn safer and will make it easier to join the traffic already driving towards Reigate. And they'll put in a better pedestrian crossing here as well. Well, as you know, the Planet Reigate area is Reigate, Redhill and Merston, Buckland, Betchworth and Brockham.
I am, though, just going to be coming outside of the Planet Reigate area for a few moments because there's two more changes that I think you might be interested in and I want to tell you about them. So I'm just coming up to... the watermill pub on the right-hand side. So along this stretch, there are central hashes in the middle of the road. So they're going to be staying.
They're going to upgrade the pedestrian island that I'm just passing. Then, of course, as you come into Dorking, on the right-hand side, there is the cemetery. And then on the left-hand side, there's that really awkward turning in and out of the mini baby Tesco's. So let's just pull in here. And I don't know whether you know, it's just past Punchbowl Lane.
It's really awkward, partly because it's a tight turning. You've got people coming from different directions. It's also because you go straight into the car park, which kind of makes sense, but there are cars parked almost immediately afterwards. you come in and also of course it is the travel lodge here as well. It's a really awkward place to turn into and out of, let alone park as well.
So what they're going to be doing is looking at that whole junction and trying to find out whether there isn't a better and safer way of negotiating it all. But that's not all. One more thing to tell you about, and this could make another big difference to your journey if you're going to be commuting to Dorking.
So finally, just before I return you to the studio, one more proposed change that planners would like to make to this stretch of the A25, and that is to reduce the speed limit from the Watermill pub on the right-hand side, past the Cemetery and the Tesco Express, all the way up to the Cockerell roundabout. just before you enter Dorking Town Centre itself. But that's not all.
They also want to reduce it from 40 to 30, going left at the Cockerell Roundabout, up the hill. And that is not all either. They also want to change it from 40 to 30, going right at the Cockerell Roundabout, where I am sitting now, past the petrol station and the Morrisons Daily on the left-hand side, down as far as the train station... and Ashcombe School. So quite a few changes there.
What do you make of those? Can you welcome them or are there some that you think oh no that's going to be a big problem? Certainly there is going to be a big problem as they do all those changes.
They make the changes to the road signage, they put in those different traffic islands, they do the extra curbing and so on and also narrowing the road as I mentioned up there just before you turn left down to Brockham. So what do you reckon? I'd love to hear from you. Get in touch with me. Hello at theplanetrygatepodcast.com.
Also going to be posting that item on our social media accounts as well. So perhaps drop a line there. And as I say, we'd love to hear about what your thoughts are on the changes there, proposed changes at this stage on the A25 all the way from essentially the Black Horse all the way up to the Cockerel Roundabout in Dorking.
This is the Planet Rygate podcast and of course there was a fuel spill on the M25 Rygate Road roundabout, excuse me, Rygate Hill roundabout, wasn't there? When was that? Kind of a week last Wednesday, wasn't it? And that got me thinking about the road layout there as well. I mean, obviously it would have delayed a lot of people, but at least the road kind of got resurfaced.
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