Marlborough Road Works – the Good and the Bad

I would like to congratulate everyone involved in the successful completion of the resurfacing of the A346 London Road / Barn Street / Herd Street through Marlborough two weekends ago. The work was scheduled for evenings to minimise disruption, it was carried out effectively and to a high standard. There was advance notice and the diversions seemed to work well. Hopefully the work will minimise problems on that stretch of road for many months – hopefully years.

So, works of this nature can be carried out in a way that minimises disruption.

And then we come to last weekend: a small excavation by Thames Water to install service to a private property on London Road managed to unnecessarily disrupt traffic for the whole weekend and into Monday morning. The work itself took a few hours on Saturday morning – and it is understandable that some disruption might arise. However, the lights went up well ahead of the work and were still there two days later. Once the workers left the site, there was plenty of room for two lanes of traffic to move past the obstruction (see pictures). However, the siting of the traffic lights prevented this. It appears that no common sense was applied to minimise disruption to the public, local businesses and reduce pollution. Instead, the attitude seems to be “we’ve got permission to disrupt, so we will”.

The fact that the traffic lights were switched off on Monday at mid-morning to allow two-way traffic past the roadworks, confirms that the road could have been open at lunchtime on Saturday: nearly two full days earlier.

Indeed, the work could have been scheduled for an evening, the road reopened as soon as the work was finished, and disruption would have been minimal.

Who is going to be held accountable for all the delays, loss of business, missed appointments, increased pollution and general inconvenience? If everyone involved did what they were supposed to do – then there is a fundamental problem with the process. Either way, the public expect answers.

Let’s hope an effective lane rental scheme can be introduced for utility works on major roads in the county as soon as possible (as it already is in Oxfordshire). In the meantime, someone should be called to account to justify the degree of disruption.

Yours,

David Hammond
Marlborough