Residents opposed to the building of a KFC and Starbucks drive-through on Peel Road in Douglas have criticised the traffic assessment done for the site.

Dave Burridge and his neighbours on Ballakermeen Drive have objected to the new sites for a variety of reasons, including on health and traffic grounds.

An application for two drive-through restaurants and a third unnamed outlet on the former Eurocars site on Peel Road was submitted over a year ago.

Mr Burridge said that having studied the transport assessment of the site that was added to the application (18/00977/B) last month, he doesn’t believe it is helpful in explaining how the road into Douglas would be affected by the new stores.

New documents provided by Buchanan Services Ltd show that the transport assessment was carried out by consulting civil and transportation planning engineers Bryan G Hall.

In its assessment, Bryan G Hall said it was asked by the Department of Infrastructure to provide more information on predicted levels of queueing at the drive-throughs.

And it agreed with the DoI to use for comparison stores on Denby Dale Road, outside Wakefield, Yorkshire, where both companies have outlets.

Further references were made to Costa Coffee stores in Banbury and Didcot, Oxfordshire.

However, Mr Burridge said that these areas are ’not a similar representation of our situation’.

He said while the stores were accessed and exited from main roads, they were on industrial estates or near large shopping centres with access roads, not directly on a main road.

And he said that most of them were either accessed via a roundabout or traffic lights, not with stop signs onto an arterial main route.

There is also concern that even if traffic is told not to turn right onto Peel Road, drivers will simply ignore it.

Mr Burridge accepted that a KFC comparison with a store in Leeds resembled the sort of road that the new sites would be on more closely.

He added that the others reflected an out of town area ’more like on the Cooil Road near B&Q’.

He also said that residents have been watching the situation with McDonald’s traffic building up on Friday nights and weekends causing congestion along Peel Road and slowing down traffic at the Quarterbridge.

’One of the neighbours has been down photographing the issues on Peel Road and our concern is that if these new sites get the go ahead, it will either get worse or just move closer to Pulrose Bridge and block the bottom of our road too’, Mr Burridge said.