Kingskerswell parish councillors have won extra time in which to consider a £125,000 bus lane scheme for the A380. They reacted angrily to a county council request to comment on its merits within minutes of seeing the full drawings for the first time. Plans for the bus lane, part of the wider Local Travel Plan for the Newton Abbot sub-regional centre, have been drafted since last summer. But the parish was only invited to comment on Monday, just days before the influential highways and traffic orders committee was due to discuss the scheme next Friday. Members of the public present also complained that insufficient consultation had been conducted, some asking if the scheme had already been signed off. County highway engineer Graham Heath said he had come to understand the parish view on the scheme, 'The details (of which) have yet to be worked out,' he said. He explained that as it stood the new scheme would remove the existing cycle lanes and provide a new combined one reserved for buses, HGVs, taxis and cycles. Coming from Newton Abbot the lane would run from Furzedown Road to Jury's Corner, following only the Torquay-bound carriageway. Heading towards Newton Abbot, it would run on the opposite side of the road from Southey Lane to Jury's Corner. He acknowledged that a ban on turning right into Avenue Road was one of the 'minor disbenefits' and agreed with Cllr Sheila Cook, whose 'main worry' was that removing the current cycle lanes would bring pedestrians closer to heavy lorries and buses. Mr Heath said the time saved on each bus journey would be 'seconds' but that annually the time would save bus operators £100,000, cash which could help cap fares. Faced with other questions about safety and traffic flow, and a complaint about mistakes in the drawings, Mr Heath said: 'It would have been much better to have had more time to talk about this.' He agreed to meet with the council again on March 23 after the public had been given the chance to view plans in the library and comment at the council's annual meeting on March 13. The plans will now go to the highways committee in June.
