North-South traffic chaos raised by MP Danny Kruger in The House

Danny Kruger, Devizes MP stepped into the debate about how to alleviate the traffic issues in and around Marlborough and make travelling on these roads – particularly the North-South route – safer.

On Thursday of last week – 21 March -Danny asked the Transport Minister – Guy Opperman – the following question:

The A338/A346, which runs north-south through Marlborough, is regularly choked nose to tail with heavy goods traffic. The villages of the Ogbournes and the Collingbournes are particularly affected, including Collingbourne Ducis, where a little girl was killed three years ago by a heavy goods vehicle. That traffic should really be on the A34 and the A36 to the east and the west. We have been waiting many months now for the results of the north-south connectivity review. Will the Minister tell us when that will happen, so that we can have a better system for managing heavy goods traffic through Wiltshire?

Minister Guy Opperman replied that he would write to him ‘in detail’ regarding ‘the powers that local authorities have to address that particular point’. Ironically, Guy Opperman also commented that he knew that area around the Collingbournes very well as he ‘grew up in Wexcombe’.

As we have all experienced traffic in Marlborough is, at times, stationary. Lots of reasons (mainly road works of all sorts and not all planned / executed correctly) but underpinned by the volume and nature of traffic on the North – South route. And not just Marlborough, Cadley, Savernake and the Collingbournes suffer, too many accidents and the state of the road is deteriorating at an alarming rate. And this is the route cause of some (serious) accidents.

Without some intervention this isn’t likey to improve at any time soon, one reason being the A417 / M5 interchange being ‘improved’ so that traffic can (finally) travel on dual carriageway roads from J15 of the M4 by Swindon, to the Midlands, North West, and even Scotland. And all of that traffic willl come through the Collingbournes, Savernake and Marlborough.

We hope that Danny Kruger’s intervention will mark this as being a ‘problem’, and one that needs to be addressed and resolved, properly. And maybe forcing heavy traffic to routes both to the east and to the west will be one answer but anything that makes the powers that be – Department of Transport – recognise the level of the problems, that can only help.