Campaigners clash over future of Exeter city centre road

The future of a hotly-contested road closure in the centre of Exeter will be decided in the New Year.

Cycle campaigners in the city want to keep Dryden Road closed to traffic, saying it provides a valuable car-free route in and out of the city and improves road safety for children going to and from school.

However, campaigners fighting to get the road re-opened say its closure has simply moved the problems elsewhere, and congestion and pollution have been moved to other streets. They say drivers are ‘rat-running’ through the nearby hospital grounds to get round the closure.

The Exeter Cycling Campaign has just published its ‘Wonford Options’ report which says the ‘modal filter’ in Dryden Road should be maintained.

It says data indicates that since the road was closed to traffic during the Covid pandemic in 2020 there has been a 50 per cent reduction in collisions in local streets. The filter has successfully removed thousands of daily car journeys, the cyclists say, creating a safer environment for more than a thousand pedestrians and more than 400 cyclists who use the road every day.

There is a high proportion of women and children among the cyclists, it says.

The report includes a dozen options for ways forward with the scheme, ranging from a ‘bus gate’ to allow public transport through to a number of options aimed at adjusting traffic flows in other roads nearby.

The cyclists say removing the Dryden Road filter would make the road ‘unsafe and unattractive’. It would increase local vehicle traffic and create capacity issues on a major arterial route junction.

“For these reasons we do not believe it is a viable option to be progressed to consultation,” the report says.

Meanwhile, campaigners fighting to have the road re-opened to traffic say there is ‘room for all’ and have been carrying out a ‘rat-run survey’ of people driving through the grounds of the hospital at Wonford during peak times – without stopping at the hospital – to get around the Dryden Road closure.

They say they have believed for some time that drivers were using the hospital site as a rat-run.

“It is another compelling reason why the road should be re-opened, both ways, for all forms of transport,” said campaigner Ian Frankum.

“The data is still being collated and assessed, but I can say with a high degree of accuracy that during the course of the survey there were hundreds of vehicle movements cutting through our hospital grounds, which is something the hospital, local councillors and planners would agree is unwelcome.”

The closure will be considered in the new year by the Exeter Highways and Traffic Orders Committee, which is made up of Devon County and Exeter City councillors.

A public consultation had been due to start in January or February, but the area to be canvassed has widened after the committee requested that nearby Bovemoors Lane should be included.

Updates will be given when the committee meets in January, but it could be July before the findings of the consultation are discussed.