Thames Water traffic chaos – is this what it was all about?

Thankfully traffic is now flowing freely at the junction of Salisbury Road, George Lane and London Doad (A4). But for 24hrs or more it wasn’t. Marlborough traffic was at an almost standstill due to the four-way traffic control in this area, in place due to a perceived Thames Water emergency overnight on Saturday / Sunday. Big questions remain – What? and Why? And why wasn’t anything done?

Traffic Control was set up in the early hours of Sunday morning (11 January) and stayed until mid-afternoon on Monday. Some initial work was conducted in the small hours of Sunday, then nothing further done until yesterday (Monday). But, the ‘work’ that was done did not involve the road, no area of road was dug up or even touched, it was all in a small area of the grass apron adjacent to the footpath – see pic.

Marlbrorough.news did get an answer from Thames Water. Apparently engineers were called out to ‘a suspected leak‘ on a ‘6inch cast iron water main‘. They were on site at 03:45 on Sunday morning. ‘This required digging up the verge of the road, which is why traffic management was put in place‘.

The answer then goes on to state that: ‘The road is now awaiting reinstatement, and we apologise for the disruption to road users while the area is put back to normal.’. However, the road surface was untouched either by the initial exploratory work or by subsequent reinstatement

Did this require such a severe series of measures that had such a major effect on life in Marlborough for more than a day? Whatever work needed to be done was addressed quickly but why then the long – and very disruptive – delay. Was the actual disruption necessary, and – more critically – why for such a long period when nothing was being done?

These are questions that need to be addressed, at a senior level to Thames Water.

At last night’s meeting of the Town Council Planning Committee, in the ‘Public Question’ section at the start of the meeting, one member of the public raised this issue and asked specifically what the Town Council intended to do? They made the point that Marlborough has suffered too many serious traffic disruptions, times of gridlock when normal life in the town almost stops and on Sunday – with the four-way light controls at a key junction – was for its duration possibly the worst of them all. Or as bad as other similar experiences anyway. The questioner followed this with pointing out that such disruption has a major effect on the economy of Marlborough, especially over a weekend as it turns visitors away.

The answer was ‘We will contact Wiltshire Council.’ The questioner went further, pointing out the impact of the disruption, asking why the Town Council would not contact Thames Water at a senior level, urgently, to which the reply was the same – ‘We will contact Wiltshire Council.’