Central motorway works ‘causing chaos’ claim
Claims that motorway roadworks are "causing chaos" for thousands of people have been denied by city bosses who say completing them alongside other schemes is minimising delays.
Newcastle's central motorway was reduced to one lane last week for maintenance which is expected to last 16 months.
Johnny Wilkinson, a former taxi driver from West Denton, said carrying out the work at the same time as the Tyne Bridge repairs and closure of the Gateshead flyover showed little thought had been given to drivers.
But Newcastle City Council said it was a good time for the motorway maintenance to take place as many drivers had already found alternative routes to avoid the bridge.
Mr Wilkinson, 34, said the "sheer amount" of roadworks taking place was not "helping the city at all", while the length of the works suggested the effect on drivers "has not been thought through".
He said: "The councils involved have not put in the investment to take care of things and this has come back to bite them, to the frustration of thousands of daily travellers."
Mr Wilkinson also said he had only seen "one or two workers" on the central motorway at a time and believed repairs could be speeded up with more staff.
On Monday, the first day of the daytime road closures, drivers suffered delays of about 29 minutes between the A1 junction at Kenton Bar and the Tyne Bridge, according to the Local Democracy Reporting Service[1].
But the council's assistant director of transport, Pamela Holmes, said the delays had reduced to seven minutes on Tuesday and 12 minutes on Wednesday.
"People are finding different routes to their journey and understanding that the roadworks are ongoing," she told BBC Radio Newcastle.
"But I have to say the p.m. peak is only three to four minutes, so it's really the a.m. peak that's been affected."
She said the reason the central motorway and Tyne Bridge works had overlapped was because the money for the repairs had been received through the same government funding.
"It was a collective bid for ?42m for both projects, so it's important we do this."
She said a benefit of combining the work was that people had already found alternative routes to avoid the Tyne Bridge.
References
- ^ Local Democracy Reporting Service (www.bbc.com)