We visited the North Wales town waiting for salvation from traffic hell

In the remote village of Llanbedr in Gwynedd a battle has been going on for 60 years. While this battle may not see armies and soldiers marching through the town, it has still caused many of its residents blood, sweat and tears.

It is all fought over a key detail running right through the heart of this small village – its road, the A496 and the traffic hell it brings in its wake. The greatest extent of this trouble comes from the village’s dire need for a relief road, as current traffic issues have become an ongoing nightmare for the remote spot.

Currently, the road is the only major route through this part of Gwynedd ^[1], meaning lorries, buses, ambulances and all the regular traffic are forced to use it, crossing over an 17th century bridge not designed for modern traffic. This frequently causes vast amounts of traffic to build up in the centre of the village, often leading to hours-long traffic jams.

A go-ahead was initially give for a £14m bypass, but this was placed on hold when the Welsh Government announced the roads review into every highways scheme in Wales in 2021 and later scrapped ^[3]. Now, Deputy Climate Change minister Lee Waters, who has responsibility for transport, has said the village will get a road just not a bypass ^[4].

But what do the people who live there make of this constant back-and-forth on the topic? We spoke to residents of the village to find out.

A passing lorry often needs to meet no oncoming traffic to get across. (Image: Christopher Davies / North Wales Live)

For many locals there is an innate sense of tiredness around the debate, a sense that they’ve heard it all before. Many dismissed the question as not worth answering, and the few that did continued to point to me to a select group of people.

These people were the members of Pobl (the people in Welsh,) members of the community fighting for a change to resolve the ongoing issues brought on by the road. They have become the group responsible for keeping the rest of the community up to date with the seemingly never-ending situation.

Lucy Powell and Wynn Hammond of Cambrian Clearance. (Image: Christopher Davies / North Wales Live)

Two prominent members are Lucy Powell and Wynn Hammond of Cambrian Clearance on the edge of the village. Both had been part of the group of around 10 originally involved with taking action over the road. The most important detail to get straight though was we were no longer talking about a bypass, but a relief road.

Speaking about the group and its goal, Lucy said: “At the end of the day, what we’ve always said is it’s not about a bypass, it’s about road safety and road safety as a universal human right. So, for us, by taking away the plans to do something about it, like they did last year, they were denying us road safety, which isn’t just there for us now, but for future generation.”

* Get our weekly Gwynedd newsletter by clicking here to sign up ^[5]

Wynn added: “What many people don’t realise about the road is that there is a primary school just five minutes away. Children walk down and cross the road, there is very little in terms of footpaths, even the one on the bridge is actually a buffer to stop vehicles damaging it.

“We do see accidents and near misses, fortunately they’re not serious because of the low speed caused by the traffic. That said we do see a lot of damage to cars parked along the street and even to the bridge itself, one car had a bumper ripped off a few weeks ago and the driver just drove off.”

Incidents like this have been common in the village, with many of its residents having been affected by hits, bumps and scratches, even losing whole cars. The real concern is that one day a vehicle will be knocked into somebody, pinning them, a genuine thought many have to consider when simply trying to cross the road.

Another vehicle related concern some of the residents have had to face was the possibility for emergency services to get through. Incidents have occurred where an ambulance has needed to reach someone on one side of the bridge but been unable to do so because of the traffic.

This ultimately meant the ambulance service having to send a helicopter, as the ambulance would have had to take an extensive detour to get around.

Lucy said: “So when the original plan was taken away, we knew we had to keep fighting, so we asked for help, we had peaceful protests, but we did it with a full willingness to work with the Welsh government and Gwynedd Council ^[6]. Now Lee Waters has agreed that we need the relief road, just with a few more addendums, such as a slower speed limit and it being a smaller road and that’s fine, so long as it happens.”

Jane Taylor-Williams of Pobl. (Image: Christopher Davies / North Wales Live)

Another member of the group was Jane Taylor-Williams, who said: “Over the years we’ve seen an awful amount of traffic, and the volume of traffic just keeps getting more and more dangerous. When the news came through that the first road had been cancelled, it was just so disheartening and not just for the people of Llanbedr, but those transit through it for work.

“So after that Pobl came together and worked really hard with everybody and said, hang on, we can’t just be left alone and they can’t just say no, we’re not having the road after everybody’s hard work. So we had the meeting with the Deputy Minister and he turned round and yes (to the road) and it was really good we were able to change his mind.

“It was unfortunate though that he decided to wait two years, as by this point we’d lost the funding and two years of planning. It is understandable that he doesn’t want to make a 60 mile an hour road, but we still have work to do. It is going to take a long time and in the meantime, it is still really dangerous for people who need to walk on that road.”

In the summer months many of the residents have fallen in a routine to escape the chaos, with Jane adding they head out at about 8am to avoid the worst of the traffic.

“Even just popping out for milk is a challenge, I can either sit in a junction and wait for 25 minutes, or chance walking down,” she said. “For the elderly it is especially dangerous, they don’t want to go down to the shops because of them have their shopping hit out of their hands.”

“Hopefully it’ll be sorted extremely soon and that Transport for Wales, the Welsh Government, Gwynedd council, and everyone else can come together with the community to get this on the road before something serious happens.”

References

^{^} Gwynedd (www.dailypost.co.uk)
^{^} Ice cream kings beat 63 rivals to move into beach kiosk on ‘Welsh Riviera’ (www.dailypost.co.uk)
^{^} later scrapped (www.dailypost.co.uk)
^{^} the village will get a road just not a bypass (www.dailypost.co.uk)
^{^} * Get our weekly Gwynedd newsletter by clicking here to sign up (www.dailypost.co.uk)
^{^} Gwynedd Council (www.dailypost.co.uk)