Warner Bros advise visitors against travelling by car (From Watford Observer)

Knight bus?

This is a major tourist attraction. Of course traffic Traffic will increase – to suggest otherwise is ludicrous.

The question Warner Bros. should be addressing is how they will deal with this increase, rather than denying the inevitable.

More importantly, they should be re-iterating the undoubted benefit of their landmark investment in the area to mitigate against equally inevitable teething troubles.

Traffic will not increas ! these fools deal in fantasy, they must live in fantasy land. Ms Parsons must think we're as daft as her.

If it were in 'London' as Warner Brothers claim it is, there would be several tube stations nearby.

I thought that was the whole point of Leavesden being Warner Brothers prefered location, due to it's excellent road links to the M25 and M1?

I am sure they will deal with any problems that arise - they do have the cash, maybe a park and ride in the future? like some of the parks in the US.

If there is traffic chaos at least Watford Council will be happy - they have been doing their best to create it for the last 20 years!!!!

What a joke . Traffic has ALREADY increased in the area just by virtue of the hundreds of employees working there , the new markings on the mini roundabouts have caused chaos with people in both segments of the lanes attempting to go straight on , causing several near accidents already by nearly forcing cars off the road , the place is a traffic disaster waiting to happen . I haven't seen any work on a rear entrance to the place by the slip road at hunton bridge yet but they want to get cracking if 'chaos on aerodrome way' isn't to become a regular headline here at the W.O ...

If they don't expect a surge in traffic why the big car park?

Stop whinging, this is a great thing happening on our door step which will create a lot of jobs/revenue for the area

The information submitted by Warner Bros with the planning application shows that 78 additional staff will be employed to support the new visitor attraction elements. Approximately half of these will work traditional 8 – 5 shift patterns and the rest will arrive and depart at less busy times on the transport networks.

Visitors will only get access to the studios by pre-booked ticket. Tours will be run every day starting between 10am and 6:40pm and lasting 2 hours 10 minutes with a further 1 hour on site for browsing, shopping and refreshment. Each tour will contain 90 people and they will depart at 10 minute intervals. The maximum number of visitors arriving will therefore be 540 per hour with this number leaving from 1pm. The applicant has studied travel modes of visitors to similar attractions. It has been assumed that 75% will arrive by car. This will create maximum two-way hourly flows of 270 vehicles.

Because of the timing of the visitor attraction opening times the development traffic loads are greatest in the evening peak hour. Its effect on the surrounding road network has been analysed and is discussed below.

Traffic counts were carried out to assess the effects of development traffic at 11 local junctions including all those around the site itself (on South Way, Aerodrome Way and the A41) and then the roundabout on Courtlands Drive (south of the Ashfields bridge over the A41) and down the A41 as far as the Dome roundabout junction with the A412 St Albans Road. These counts were taken during the filming one of the Harry Potter films so we would have picked up representative data for when the studios are in use. Of these junctions 9 showed significant increases (over 5%) when factored up to take account of the development traffic.

Further details are available in the Three Rivers planning committee agenda for 22nd April 2010, which is available on the Three Rivers web site.