Wednesday, October 10, 2007

Traffic hokey cokey.

You dig the road up, you fill the road in; dig it up, fill it in and shake your shovels about. You do the hokey-cokey and you turn around that's what Stourport's all about - hoy!

So yesterday morning stuck in a queue that stretched as far as the eye could see because of the dumb lights set up on Bridge Street (2 minute rotation I think); yesterday evening they'd gone. This morning they're back, as is the queue.

On the plus side they've set up some no parking cones along Bridge Street, feel free to add some to York Street too- yep the left-hand side at the end is still blocked off which was fun when the double-decker stopped to let some passengers off at the blocked-off bus-stop and no-one could get past due to the van parked across the pavement over the single yellow line (8.30am-6.00pm) and single yellow stripe (couldn't see times) opposite and next to the blockage.

[Off-topic as mentioned previously the new Highway Code has been absorbed by the Direct.Gov site and when I was just confirming the meaning of the road markings I now find that rather then a web page as before all markings are now separated into downloadable PDF files - why?]

The Worcester Road lights are still down - yay! Although they have blocked the left-hand exit onto the OGL island, there is another lane so no problem... well no real problem if they told you that the lane was blocked so you could get into the correct one instead of coming to a grinding halt. Oh silly me they do tell you that a lane is blocked further up the road; the right-hand lane, the one that's open.

They've also solved the problem of the temporary road surface mess next to Discovery Road by slapping some wooden boards over the top of it making it ramp-like, but again with the no warnings.

On the good news it was mentioned that Lickhill Road was traffic light free, but I'm unsure if that was down to the bridge closure.

The work in town is of course working to a plan, one that was put forward to public consultation earlier this year and which I criticised. It was easy to review as the plans were made available on-line and still are. The odd thing is that despite the work being started, the actual finalised approved plans are nowhere to be seen, a phone-call tells me they're not on-line (yet, maybe), but that the Civic Centre should have copies - useful.

Anyway the big joke is that only the resurfacing is going ahead, with the 'improvements' being held off until early 2008, except for the street lighting which will still be done. I know I slag them off, but this is a good decision; we've had continuing disruptions since October last year and the businesses need a break especially at this time of year.

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