THIS letter has been sent to the Vale of Glamorgan Highways Team.

I am writing with regard to the trial one-way system that has been put in place on Trinity Street. I am a resident of Aberystwyth Crescent which is a road off of Trinity Street and maybe one of the roads that was forgotten about whilst the planning stage for this trial was happening.

Firstly can I say that I agree that Trinity Street is a traffic problem area and so understand that something has to be done about traffic congestion in this area, however, I am at a loss to understand how the current trial is going to work and so far in my opinion it is definitely not working.

On March 31, the day before the trial came into force, all roads leading to Trinity Street were marked with ‘road closed’ signs. Living in a ‘no-through’ road off of Trinity Street ONLY (there are no other feeder streets), I found this impossible to drive to my street – every junction had a closure sign. I ignored the road closure signs as there was absolutely no other way of driving into my own street.

My daughter who is a new driver rang me in a blind panic as she didn’t want to ignore any road-sign instructions and get into trouble. She had been basically driving around in circles for a good half an hour before I had to run up Trinity Street to rescue her at the top and reassure her that I would take the brunt of any action taken against her by ignoring the traffic signs. This has knocked her confidence as a new driver greatly – thanks for that. I did telephone the out of hours service to your department, spoke to someone very helpful, left my name and address and even though at about 9pm that night some poor council employee was out removing the road signs, I have heard nothing from your department. Again, thanks!

I presume that all other roads leading off of Trinity Street have been taken into account because they are two-way roads and actually lead somewhere, unlike Aberystwyth Crescent. The only ways now to drive into our street are either down the hill from Montgomery Road/Porthkerry Road or across the hill from Queen Street, the latter being quite dangerous as many drivers are ignoring the road signs erected and are driving up the hill from the junction with High Street and Queen Street.

Another fact about our street is that it has two schools on it – High Street Primary School and Ysgol St Baruc, this is a traffic nightmare at the best of times and as a consequence residential parking is a huge issue, however, parents driving their children to school from the roads surrounding Trinity Street now all either come down the hill or across from Queen Street. his has made the congestion at school times even worse than it was already with confused drivers everywhere – this is an accident waiting to happen and even though there is a school crossing patrol, they have no control over road-raged drivers or just innocent people getting it wrong.

My route out of my street up to Port Road is now even more complicated, which includes driving out of my street, down Trinity Street, up St Paul’s avenue and up College Hill past Ysgol St Curig.

For the past few days since April 1, when the trial started, the traffic who used to use Trinity Street, now use College Road which is much narrower, has many parked cars and has another school entrance directly leading out onto it (Ysgol St Curig). If you are travelling from the West of Barry along Park Crescent, your first available route South is down College Road. If you’re travelling from Broad Street and wish to go North in the direction of Colcot Road, the only route is up St Paul’s Avenue and up College Road. You have simply moved the traffic from one narrow hill to another narrow hill, but have put school children at risk in the process.

With this letter are the routes I can take to get to my home on Aberystwyth Crescent. In RED is the route that takes me up Trinity Street but then re-directs me in a circle around Montgomery Road and back down Trinity Street to turn into my street, in BLUE is the shorter alternative, however, because the flow of traffic is now coming down Trinity Street, it makes Queen Street a nightmare to navigate with again a very narrow passage through – my car’s wing mirror has already suffered because of a line of cars that didn’t want to stop and compromise our way through. That was a quick £45 bill at the garage. Again, thanks!

As I said at the beginning, I do agree that Trinity Street is a problem area and a one-way system either up or down the hill seems sensible to me. It’s the confusion of the current layout that seems more dangerous at the moment and the fact that people being re-routed are having to go past a primary school. I presume the same added volume of traffic now passes Romily School too.

Thank you for taking the time to read my rather detailed email but thought it was necessary in this case. If there are any further resident consultations, meetings or ways to provide you with the information you need to make an informed decision at the end of this trial phase, please let me know as I’d be more than willing to contribute.

Name and address supplied