AN INNOVATIVE traffic control system outside Chester Railway Station has been hailed a success.

Concerns have been raised time and again about the lack of road markings and conventional pedestrian crossings since the European-style measures were introduced.

But Cheshire West and Chester Council leader Mike Jones, in response to a listener, told Dee 106.3 radio station : “I saw a letter in the paper blaming myself and ‘my cronies and the council’ for doing this work. I’d just like to point out that although I get blamed for pretty well everything that goes wrong in the city, that’s not factually correct.

“The work on the station area was completed in December 2007, which is well before the new council was formed and it was based on the fact that in Europe there’s a lot of squares where they don’t have road markings and what it’s proved is that control of the road moves from the vehicle to be more equitably shared between the pedestrian, the cyclist and the car.

“And that’s why they’ve trialled this outside the station – the county council did this – and it’s proved to be the case. Because there are no road markings cars and drivers approach much more cautiously. They slow down and they start to be more aware.”

As a result the ‘high level’ of accidents had been reduced to ‘almost nothing’.

He added: “It looks much nicer because you haven’t got all these yellow and white markings all over the road detracting from what is a beautiful station building.

“There have only been two slight injury accidents in the last three years and both of these were to bus passengers – one passenger when they were getting off the bus while it was still moving sprained their ankle and the other two passengers fell after the bus braked sharply. So to be fair to the highway engineers, they got that right.”