A COUNCILLOR responsible for road safety has been told she shouldn’t wait for a child to be killed on a road used as “rat run” before responding to concerns over speeding. 

Councillor Catrin Maby is the cabinet member for climate change and the environment on Monmouthshire’s Labour cabinet with her responsibilities including the county’s highways. 

At a meeting of the council’s place scrutiny committee on Monday, September 26, she was told 77 residents had signed a petition expressing concern at speeding along Birbeck Road, in Caldicot where the limit has already been lowered to 20 miles per hour. 

They have called for a meeting with the council to discuss potential steps to force traffic to slow down such as “cobbled rumble pads” either along the street or at both ends of the road, which they say is used as a “rat run” by drivers bypassing nearby “humped” routes. 

Monitoring has identified the average speed along Birbeck Road, where there is a children’s play park, at just above 20mph but residents say that doesn’t reflect the traffic travelling at “much greater speeds”. 

But Cllr Maby said from the detail she had seen she thought the most likely outcome to their petition would be continued monitoring “evidence”, which she said was the council’s previously agreed approach to such requests. 

She told the committee: “The most practical way forward would be for them to continue to monitor accident data because there have been no recorded accidents in the last five years.” 

But Green Party councillor Ian Chandler said the council shouldn’t just rely on the number of accidents. 

The Llantilio Crossenny councillor told the cabinet member: “Evidence for addressing excessive speeding should not be limited to accidents. Just the fact that there’s not been an accident in the last five years should not be important, we shouldn’t wait for a child to be killed before we take action.” 

He added that “perception” of the safety of a road impacts the number of people willing to walk and cycle and said: “It has a detrimental effect on active travel.” 

The committee also referred to the cabinet a petition, signed by 58 residents and 18 “regular visitors” to Llantrisant village calling for a 40mph on the road from Langstone to Usk and a 20mph limit on the “inner village road”.  

A petition, with 86 signatures, asking for a 50mph limit on the Usk to Wentwood road, “at least covering the section between Llanllowell Church and the top of Penycaemawr Hill” was also passed to the cabinet member. 

The other petition passed to the cabinet was signed by 28 residents of the Meadows, Usk complaining about “the poor state of the road and pavement” due to the number of “pot holes”.