Richard Baum

Occasionally the struggle to get little things achieved in my ward vastly outweighs the small-time reality of what it is I am trying to do. Today’s successful installation of bollards on Kingswood / Dashwood Road is the perfect case in point.

One night about six months ago I noticed the world’s single largest HGV trying to do a three point turn down the residential side-street that is Dashwood Road. This monster truck was, seriously, about thrice the width of the road, resplendent with more bright light bulbs than the Blackpool Illuminations, and almost certainly possessing a horn of such magnitude that a single honk would have de-forested Prestwich Clough.

This was just the latest in a string of trucks getting stuck down that road, having fallen foul of giggling sat-nav machines mischievously mis-directing their hapless drivers on the way to somewhere else. And obviously the local residents were getting mighty fed-up of their cars being de-wing-mirrored , their walls being knocked down, and their sanity sorely tested.

One such Dashwood-dweller asked whether I could sort out a bollard, which would deter the truck drivers from attempting the three-point turns, and have them driving round the block instead.

An easy task you might think, since a bollard costs £200 and the Council’s budget is £250,000,000. Sadly, this would prove not to be the case, and it is only now, half a year and several threats to pay for the blasted thing myself, that we finally have the Richard Baum Bureaucracy Gone Mad Memorial Bollard unveiled to the waiting world.

The delays were unfathomable. Partly because Council officers gave this absolutely no priority (which is understandable when there are major junctions that need completely re-building, but frustrating nonetheless), but mainly I think because the lines of communication between Finance and Highways are as frayed as a tatty old rope bridge. It took more to-ing and fro-ing than it is almost possible to believe to get this done. But get it done we did. And I am proud.

Unfortunately we are only half way there. The symptom has been attacked, but the cause has not. I wrote to the business to whom the trucks are attempting to deliver, advising them that their lorries were being guided by the sat-nav equivalent of “Number 5” from the Short Circuit films. They assured me that they would take care of it, but they clearly haven’t because the drivers still travel ever more irretrievably into suburbia before realising that a 40 foot truck probably shouldn’t be driving down a narrow street of terraced housing in the middle of the night.

So I have asked for the Council to install signs to tell drivers to ignore their Sat Navs. I am told that such signs don’t exist, but I know that they do because I’ve seen them with my own eyes in such exotic locations as Ashton under Lyne.

Their installation will be another nail in the coffin of despair for local people, but will probably take at least another six months to get done, because nothing’s ever simple, and we’re already starting from a fairly unpromising point whereby the Council flat-out denies that the signs even exist!

And of course I await with baited breath the necessary removal of the new bollards when a truck tries to three point turn anyway and gets utterly stuck.

Rick