Rerouting McDonald's Entrance To Station Road 'Is An Option' Says The Highways Manager

Talks have continued between WSCC, MSDC, the Police and the franchise owner of McDonald's as a solution is still sought for the traffic chaos in the immedate area of the restaurant and Station Road car park.

Speaking at Tuesday evening's West Sussex County Local Committee meeting. Highways manager Richard Speller gave a verbal update on the situation.



The main points are:
The McDonald's managment are trying to anticipate when they are getting a high volume of customers using the drive-thru in order to provide enough staff on shift to cope with the demand.

From a highways point of view, Mr Speller said that he doesn't believe that there is a reasonably practical engineering solution to the problem.

He points to there already being 'keep clear' markings on the roundabout - which are largely ignored - so he doesn't think there would be an advantage by adding more or by adding yellow box markings.



Mr Speller said: "Obviously there is an option to redesign the entrance to the drive-thru and take it through the car park and out onto Station Road, but I suspect all that will do is move the problem from the roundabout and out to the junction of Station Road opposite Waitrose.

"I think that the answer is that the franchise manager has to get his staff rates correct to anticipate demand."

In Response, Cllr Anne Jones said: "McDonald's as we know is a very hot potato. You mention markings on the road, but they are actually faded and of course some people still ignore them. I still favour the yellow boxes because 90% of drivers will take notice.

"We cannot got into Station Road because we've got new developments there, it's a very narrow road.. It may look easy to solve but it isn't. So please don't wipe out yellow boxes as an option."

Mr Speller replied: "I'm not ruling out that we will have to spend some revenue to sort this problem out, I'm just reluctant to do so at the moment if I can't guarantee the sort of outcome that you're expecting. I can certainly get the existing roadmarkings refreshed as part of our routine maintenance."



A local resident spoke on the issue and suggested that a significant contributer to the traffic may be relieved somewhat if the first parking space alongside the drive-thru and the small bit of pavement were to be removed to allow cars the space to get round to the McDonald's customer car park without having to wait for the drive-thru traffic to clear.

In response, Mr Speller said that he would make that suggestion to the McDonald's franchise owner.

We await some progress...

Got an opinion on this story? Leave a comment below.....
Do you think moving the entrance of McDonald's to Station Road could help? How about the resident's suggestion of removing the kerb and the first parking space next to the drive-thru in order to assist traffic flow?