Kevin McShane Transport Planner The Studio 555 Lisburn Road BELFAST BT9 7GQ. Tel /

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1 Kevin McShane Transport Planner The Studio 555 Lisburn Road BELFAST BT9 7GQ Tel / mcshanek@btinternet.com Our Ref January 2015 Ms Nicole Thompson DoE Strategic Planning Causeway Exchange 1-7 Bedford Street BT2 7EG Dear Nicole REF TRANSPORT INPUT, 130 SAINTFIELD ROAD, BELFAST Thank you for the copy of the consultation response from Transport NI. We note that the Department had raised a number of details in relation to the design and we have taken these on board within the revised drawings prepared for the road access. The layout of the access and position is unchanged from the original submission but some minor kerb realignments and notes have been added. Please note the departments comments are in italics and our response to each is in normal text font. The draft condition and informatives are noted first. This condition is acceptable and we append to this letter a copy of the departure form set out to deal with the anticipated Departures. These Departures broadly relate to the - 1. The development hereby permitted shall not commence until full engineering details of the vehicular accesses onto the XXXX Road have been submitted to and approved by the Department. All works shall comply with the requirements of the Design Manual for Roads and Bridges and all other relevant standards and technical guidance, including approval of the necessary Departures/ Relaxations from standard, generally in accordance with Drawing No YYYY bearing the Planning Office date stamp ZZ/ZZ/2015. And the Informative: 1. The Applicant must recognise that implementation of the proposal is dependent on the successful completion of the application for Relaxations and Departures from Standard to be determined by Network Services, Transport NI Headquarters, Clarence Court, Adelaide Street, Belfast, BT2 8GB. The applicant should forward an acknowledgement that the above Condition would be acceptable (and at the applicants risk should relaxations and departures not be accepted). 2. Once the access design is accepted in principle a revised Private Streets Determination (PSD) will be required for road widening to accommodate the

2 right turn facility. Once an acceptable layout is achieved the appropriate drawings will be required. Please do not forward multiple copies until then. The condition is considered to be a standard one that is normally applied to designs of new developments associated with the introduction of a new access on to a public road. The drawings have been revised to take on board the individual comments as noted below. The departures applied for are not as a result of the design but relate to departures on the existing road. However as the design is influenced by this existing road we have to apply for these departures. The first informative does highlight that it is normal practice to use departures and relaxations when an access is being improved over the existing arrangements, or where some of the modern standards cannot be achieved due to the use of an existing roadway. We have noted above that these departures relate to the existing road alignment and we assume that there is a reasonable prospect that they would be approved by TNI post the grant of Planning Permission. The second informative seeks to provide a Private Streets Determination for the area of road which is to be widened. A PSD was already submitted as part of the application and we are content to update this, if required, post planning. In summary we do not believe that the roads drawings have materially changed as the access is consistent with the originally submitted design. As such the other comments from Transport NI are reproduced below in italics and our comments are attached. 1. The access will be intensified in use and Transport NI agrees there is a requirement for an appropriately designed right turn facility at the access. The proposed access is onto a high speed, rural road on the Protected Routes network. As such fully dimensioned drawings at 1:200 scale, designed in accordance with the Design Manual for Roads and Bridges, should be submitted. Where this design falls short of the requirements of DMRB any necessary relaxations and departures from DMRB must be applied for through TNI Headquarters. The overall design of the junction should be carried out following TD 95/42 (Geometry of Major/Minor road Junctions), specifically, Layout 5. Following internal consultation with TNI Design and Consultancy Services (DCS) the following points must be addressed on revised drawings before TNI would regard the design acceptable in principle. TNI would also require a draft of proposed relaxations and departures. A layout plan to a scale of 1:200 has been submitted. This has been updated to take on board the comments noted below. We also attach a copy of the Departure Form highlighting the departures sought, together with justification measures. Again we reiterate that the departures are for the existing road rather than for our access. The further detailed points raised by Transport NI are detailed below and we comment on each one.

3 1. Visibility splays RHS, shown as 4.5 m x 150 m, should be 4.5 m x 215 m. LHS, shown as 4.5 m x 160 m, should be 4.5 m x 215 m. If the sightlines cannot be achieved the appropriate departures must be identified. The assessment of the existing road conditions looking at the harmonic Visibility, Bendiness and speed reveals that the road has a design speed of 85A. Therefore a departure has been sought to use the existing design speed as the design speed of the road. This is consistent with the follow on survey carried out by Paul McKeown from TNI and showed an 85 th percentile speed of 50mph. DCAN15 sets out the requirement for calculating sight lines and shows that in paragraph 2.3 that the normal requirements for the priority road distance or y-distance are set out in Table B and the notes thereto. They depend on the speed of traffic on the priority road. The speed of traffic is therefore used to calculate the sightlines. The speed survey at the site highlighted a design speed of less than 50mph at the site. The full design standard set out in DCAN15 for the y distance on the road is 160m at 53mph. For 44mph the full standard is 120m, and interpolating between the two to get to the 50mph speed gives a sight line requirement of 147m for 50mph. As such it is just a matter of justifying the sightlines shown on the drawings already submitted. TD9 does set out a full design requirement of 160m for the stopping sight distance for an 85A. 2. No indication of the Gradient of Access (TD 41/95 paragraph 2.27). This detail must be included. Paragraph 2.27 seeks to have a dwell area of circa 15m on the approach to the priority road with a gradient after this not exceeding 10%. As part of the detailed design a dwell area at a gradient of 2.5% will be provided and the approach road to this dwell area does not exceed 10%. A long section has been prepared showing the access route into the site and this demonstrates these levels. 3. Junction layout does not comply with TD 41/95 Layout 5. Layout 5 allows for widening to take place along both sites of the priority road, as the development only seeks widening on one side of the road the taper is extended to allow for sufficient length to reach the required width. In addition Layout 5 provides a refuge island in the middle of the junction and a taper on the first 40m into the site. Within the proposal the access road starts to curve so that there is no view from the priority road into the site. This is a design feature so that there are no views directly into the quarry site from the road, and as such it required the road to bend into the site. The access road is a private access and will not be adopted. The taper is normally provided to allow HGV s to turn in and start to merge with the existing road width, however in the proposal tracking has been carried out to demonstrate that the HGV s can sweep into the minor road. Copies of the tracking drawings have been appended to this submission. As there are no footways in the area a pedestrian refuge island has not been provided as there is negligible pedestrian activity in the area. We are

4 therefore content that although the layout is not the same as layout 5 in TD41/95 the principle of the issues raised has been accommodated. 4. Approaching Stopping Sight Distances are not shown (horizontal and vertical aspects). This detail must be included. In this situation the Saintfield Road is an existing road and there is no proposal to change the stopping sight distances along the priority road. We have prepared a long section along the existing road which demonstrates a 1.05m to 1.05m stopping sight distance of 160m. The section has shown the view from the proposed access. The departure for the 85A design speed is approved, then the layout complies with the sightline requirement. If the design speed is 100kph then this represents a one-step departure from the full requirement and would normally be considered as a relaxation. In any event it is the sightline that exists along the existing road. 5. The agent will need to demonstrate horizontal and vertical alignment of the road. This detail must be included. As per point 4 above, this is an existing road and a long section has been provided. The vertical alignment is unchanged and the only change to the horizontal alignment is the introduction of the taper to accommodate the right turn lane. 6. Deceleration length, Table 7/5a, design speed 100 kph, appears acceptable however there are no details of gradients. The gradients are to tie into the existing road and will not be changed as part of the development. The new access has been designed with a gradient to comply with the shallow gradient on the approach to the junction. The full 55m deceleration has been provided to be the full design for the 85kph design speed. If the design speed is retained at 100kph then the 55m represents a one-step relaxation. 7. The existing drawing layout is inaccurate. Lanes taper down to 1.8 m, kerbs are not parallel with the ghost island. All the land along the development side of the carriageway is within the control of the applicant and the lane markings and taper location can be optimised to provide an appropriate lane width along this frontage. There were some extraneous lines on the drawing but these have been removed and the revised drawings clearly show an appropriate lane width and taper and we are content that this does not impact upon the principle of the layout drawing already submitted. 8. No swept paths drawings have been provided (TD 42/95 paragraph 7.14). This detail must be included. Swept path drawings were prepared and have been appended to this submission as part of the revised layout 9. TD 41/95, design of the access requires internal tapers and radii would be suitable for all large vehicle, Radii = 15 m, taper 1:6 over 30 m. As noted above the design of the access would normally use a taper to allow access to the site, however in this instance the road curves away to provide screening from the road and the curves used have been tracked to demonstrate that they still fulfil the requirement of the design guide. 10. No check has been carried out effect on adjacent field accesses (TD 41/95). In practice maintenance of existing sightlines should be acceptable however a departure from standard would be required. ). This detail must be included. The x-distance from a field gate is 2m, and as a 2m verge has been retained the impact on the sightlines will be negligible. The sightline is still at least 2x160m.

5 11. Kerb construction details should be as for a high speed road. We are content to provide higher kerbs as requested, however this does not impact on the design of the scheme. 12. There is a drivability requirement to prevent the creation of knuckle points (TD 42/95 para 2.9 and 8.4). This detail must be included. This is really the smoothing of kerbs along the road line. We are content to accept such a requirement and the alignment on the kerb line has been amended on the submitted drawings. The submitted drawings do demonstrate that the works can be introduced along the land controlled by the Department and the lands under the control of the applicant. We thank you for the comments and trust that the above response provides the required clarification that the design will not materially change as a result of these comments. Yours sincerely Kevin McShane BEng CEng MICE MIHT MTPS ENC /P/03, Site Layout 1 of /P/04, Site Layout 2 of /P/11, Construction Details /P/200, Long Sections /P/101, Autotracking Departure Form