Stop Signs Run Riot in Village Confusion

Courier Column Friday 6 September under headline

Vive la difference ...except on the roads

            Driving into small towns or villages in this part of the French countryside can be something of a challenge.  Traffic calming measures have been taken to such extremes that you can face half a dozen stop signs, a few mini-roundabouts, a couple of chicanes and a brace of traffic lights before you even reach the village square. If you ever do.  Because chances are cars will have been diverted away from the centre entirely.

            I’m all for slowing down traffic in populated places, and in my home village of Benenden we have just acquired a portable speed monitoring system that will inform drivers if they are exceeding the limit.  But only inform them. Our parish council has no powers to institute other measures.

            French communes, by contrast, can do almost whatever they like as they own all but the main roads. Thus stop sign are positioned on junctions with tiny alleys from which no vehicle could possibly emerge, and mini-roundabouts and speed bumps spring up seemingly overnight to confuse and irritate drivers.

            The Town Hall here in Abeilhan recently tried to impose a one-way system through the narrow streets of the village. It was widely ignored, and the Mayor and councillors roundly abused wherever they went until they reversed their decision.  Other towns have not objected so vehemently and are stuck with equally absurd schemes. It’s now impossible to get to the café, restaurants and shops in centre of the nearby hilltop town of Magalas without taking a circuitous route via the lower roads and entering from the opposite side.  And even this supposed ‘by-pass’ contains three stop signs and two mini-roundabouts to dismay drivers.

            One area where the French seem to have got their transport right is with buses – or at least bus fares.  You can travel anywhere within the Hérault Départment – roughly twice the size of Kent – for a maximum of 1.60 euros (about £1.35). In another Départment we took a fabulous bus trip along the coast road near the Spanish border, stopped for lunch and then continued our journey for just one euro each.  An increasing number of local train lines also offer a flat one-euro fare almost regardless of distance.

            Sadly, though, even if the price is right, the frequency of rural bus services doesn’t seem much better than around the villages of Kent and Sussex.