12:20pm Thursday 8th May 2008
By Neil Docking
IMPROVEMENT works will start this month on the controversial traffic lights at Asda Westbrook - taking the spiralling cost of the council's cock-up to around £700,000.
Warrington Borough Council has announced it is to spend £150,000 on work at the Cromwell Avenue and Westbrook Crescent junction. Taxpayers have already forked out £535,000 on the controversial scheme.
Last September experts revealed traffic flow data used by the council when planning the lights was four years out of date and that the number of visitors leaving Gulliver's wasn't accounted for.
JMP consultants said it would cost £500,000 to make the junction work properly.
A council spokesman said: "It is anticipated that the changes we are introducing will deliver additional capacity for cars, reduced average delays during peak periods, improved pedestrian access, a junction better able to cope with fluctuations in demand and more reliable journey times for travellers.
"Delays will still be present at peak times but they will be significantly reduced in frequency and scale."
Work will include: l widening of the Cromwell Avenue northbound approach to the junction to create a left turn lane to reduce delays; l a signal-controlled crossing across Ladywood Road with a central pedestrian island; l a bus lay-by on the south side of Westbrook Crescent (opposite the petrol station); l CCTV to allow the junction to be monitored from the council's traffic control room; l and changes to the sequence of traffic lights.
Clr Terry O'Neill, the council's Labour leader, who is also a Burtonwood and Westbrook parish councillor, says proper consultation on the traffic lights did not take place and that the original roundabout did not need replacing.
But council planners say it is not possible to replace the roundabout and provide an acceptable level of pedestrian access.
Speaking to the Guardian yesterday, Clr O'Neill said: "What we as a parish council wanted was a proper investigation and the possible option of returning to the roundabout, which worked well.
"What we have got at the moment is a traffic junction that nobody wanted and nobody supported, and nobody admits who made the decision.
"If someone politically in the administration would put their hands up and say yes, we got it wrong' we could understand.
"What they appear to be doing is spending money to cover up the original decision.
"No one locally can understand where these lights came from and what is their purpose - they are just making people's lives a misery round there."
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