Bollards on the move
It’s a mystery. Two huge granite blocks – part of Maidstone
council’s new-look High Street – seem to be turning on their
axes.
You would have thought that it
would take the Royal Engineers and a team of Gurkhas to shift the
blocks that must weigh getting on for a ton each.
Nevertheless two of them, at the
junction of Pudding Lane with High Street, have definitely
swivelled around 45 degrees since they were installed.
Are the town centre’s late-night
revellers organising themselves for some kind of drunken Iron Man
challenge?
Is it an alien visitation?
Cllr Malcolm Greer, the cabinet
member responsible for the High Street regeneration programme,
thinks he has the answer.
"It’s the buses, or at least HGVs,
turning in at that corner," he said.
"We think they are occasionally
striking the blocks and shifting them around."
His theory seems to be supported by
a chip at the bottom of one of the blocks.
Cllr Greer said the council was
aware of the movement and had already taken steps to address the
problem.
He said: "Apart from the movement
of some of the blocks, we feel their design is wrong too.
"When work starts on the
regeneration of the Lower High Street in March next year, it is our
intention to have all of those large blocks replaced."
He said a new design would be about
two feet in diameter and around three feet high. He said: "This
time they will be embedded in the ground so that they can’t be
moved."
Cllr Greer insisted alternative
more appropriate sites would be found to re-use the existing
blocks.
"They will not be wasted," he said.
21/12/12
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