OMEGA: New road will mean no traffic jams (From Warrington Guardian)

OMEGA: New road will mean no traffic jams

10:10am Thursday 28th February 2013 in News

COUNCIL chiefs and Omega representatives say a new £7m road will mean HGV build ups at planned distribution centres on both the North and South sites will ‘not happen’.

Plans for a fourth distribution centre, set to be one of the country’s largest, have been tabled in the past two weeks.

As reported in the last week’s Warrington Guardian, residents had already expressed concerns about HGV traffic causing gridlock on roads surrounding junction eight of the M62.

But Andrew Sutherland, of Omega Warrington Limited, believes the construction of a £7million access road running parallel to the M62 to service the Brakes site and a new, purpose-built road for the proposed centres on both the North and South site will alleviate traffic in the area and ensure Burtonwood Road does not suffer further traffic problems when the sites become operational.

“The fear is we will have a line of HGVs coming down Burtonwood Road, that won’t happen,” he said.

“The HGVs will specifically be told to use the purpose-built site roads and avoid public roads as much as possible.

“The reality is that the HGV drivers don’t want to sit in traffic either, so they will take the route that gets them there fastest and that route will invariably be the roads through the development site.”

The access road for the north of the site is set to be completed by the middle of 2014, with Warrington Borough Council also in ‘advanced stages of discussion’ with the Government in regards to funding for the other access roads planned to serve the rest of the Omega site.

The distribution centres will also operate 24 hours a day in three shift patterns, with Omega hoping this staggered approach will prevent the bulk of HGV traffic clashing with peak times in the morning and afternoon.