Blackburn Co-op junction plans backed by Garioch Area Committee
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PLANS to improve a dangerous junction onto Blackburn's Main Road have been agreed.
The junction, which connects the car park of the village's Co-op with the main road, was the scene of a near-miss involving a child in 2018.
At the Garioch Area Committee on Tuesday councillors agreed to take steps to stop cars parking diagonally in the loading bay by the shop's front entrance.
Members argued that this parking restricts visibility for cars leaving the customer car park.
A temporary traffic order, better signage and encouraging cars to parallel park are some of the solutions set to be introduced.
Councillor Glen Reid, who brought the issue to the Garioch Area Committee, said: "As you can see from this report, there is a persistent parking safety issue here.
"There was a near miss here involving a child. The community want a solution and the co-op want to help but can't do anything because we own the road.
"The customer car park is at the rear and people struggle to see when exiting the car park onto the busy main road.
"The Police want to help: the community police officer is the person who actually first raised it with myself, along with a parent.
"The local Inspector supports a Council-led solution because his forces are actually quite stretched.
"I raised this so Council officers could provide a solution, and they have. It is a relatively inexpensive and quick solution which we can carry out.
"We are local councillors and in my view we need to do all we can to improve the lives of the people that we represent.
"We need to do all that we can reasonable do, and this is a reasonable solution."
Other councillors suggested other methods for managing parking in the loading zone, including the store placing traffic cones in the disputed loading zone.
However, snags meant this was not taken to a vote.
Councillor Trevor Mason said: "Is there any reason why the shop could not buy cones and just put them out when they were opening?"
Cllr Reid said: "Basically, where this all started originally, was after a near miss with a child back in 2018.
"At that time a community police officer, PC Steve Middleton, who had been talking with the Co-op said the solution would be to put cones out.
"He said the cones were kept by the Council's roads people and they were refused a couple of times.
"After three years of trying to get some kind of solution, that is why I raised the issue here."
Another option suggested was the introduction of keyed bollards in the loading area.
The suggestion was mentioned in the report provided to members, but was discouraged by roads department manager Brian Strachan.
Mr Strachan said: "This is not something that we would promote, putting bollards on the public road.
"I am not aware of any major area where we have bollards on the public road.
"This is quite a unique situation which we have here but we are taking other steps.
"The problem is members of the public who are doing all the dangled-in parking which causes issues.
"It is human nature and all that, they don't want to walk too far."
