IKEA comes to Reading!

Great news for all us IKEA’Phobes!! Not so great for the proposed location! One thing that has always amazed me about local planners is their sheer misunderstanding of how real life works.

You only have to look around Reading (see bottom of post for other examples) to see how congested they have made various shopping areas around Reading and now it looks like they’re going to do it again with the IKEA development in Pincents Lane, Tilehurst.

With one roundabout controlling traffic towards, Sainsbury’s, DunElm, Porsche, McDonalds and a number of other places, we’re now going to see thousand of us try to get past the same roundabout as we struggle to leave with our Billy Book Cases and POÄNG chairs (very comfortable by the way).

Surely a development of this magnitude whilst long overdue on this of London deserves a better location with better access. Or, perhaps its just a way the planners have of limiting our access to these ‘new’ facilities!

Some other self generated Reading bottle necks include:

• The recently installed Shinfield Traffic Lights – Now to be ‘adjusted’

• The entrance to the Reading Gate Retail Park – Only one in/out roundabout

• The entrance to the Brunel Retail Park – Only one in/out roundabout

Will the same thing happen for the proposed Reading University Science park just over the M4 with a new roundabout proposed to go between the Black Boy pub and the M4? How will they fit that in!

It seems to me that ‘Planners’ do not answer to anyone of authority and they continue to be able to introduce more and more congestion into our already overcrowded roads without any consequence to their actions.