The Royal Horticultural Society (RHS) has thanked National Highways and Balfour Beatty for ‘facilitating stakeholder engagement’ for its flagship Wisley Flower Show.
A huge scheme on the M25 Junction 10 has significantly impacted traffic flows on both the motorway and the A3, where many Wisley visitors arrive from, and the RHS and the highways teams had to work around it as best they could.
Local MPs Angela Richardson and Sir Paul Beresford (pictured) visited the scheme in July 'to make sure there is a plan to ensure the RHS Garden Show can go ahead successfully in September while the improvements continue'.
Elwyn Owen, RHS visitor services manager, told Highways that, as well as reducing capacity, the organisation had increased opening hours, introduced timed slots to better facilitate travel to and from the garden and provided free shuttle buses between Woking rail station and Wisley, which avoided using the A3.
The RHS said the Garden had about 75% capacity for the show week, although HortWeek reported that numbers in September were pegged at 6,000 a day, down from 10,000-11,000 a day before the roadworks started.
Elwyn Owen said: ‘Ahead of the Wisley Flower Show – and in light of the current major infrastructure project on the M25 Junction 10 – we worked with National Highways and Balfour Beatty to improve traffic management around the show.
‘These combined measures significantly eased traffic flow and helped ensure our visitors could have the best possible day out. Although we had smaller numbers than usual, tens of thousands of people attended the show over the five days and we were pleased to receive positive feedback from many visitors about the way the traffic was managed.
‘We would like to thank National Highways and Balfour Beatty for facilitating considered and effective stakeholder engagement with Surrey County Council, Surrey Police and ourselves to mitigate the impact of the works.’
Although the RHS declined to give visitor numbers for the show, which ran from 5-10 September, Highways understands that weekday visitors were down by approximately a half on previous years.
