Minster Road works

I don't travel along the dual-carriageway between Kidderminster and Stourport much, and no-one's mentioned this to me, but the layout of the works being done on the exit to Stourport from this carriageway is insane.

Picture a dual-carriageway as it merges into two-way traffic. As you might expect the right-hand lane joins with the left-hand one, however just before this point a slip-road allows traffic to turn right and is forced into conformity by concrete dividers. Just beyond the merging point is a left-hand turn and this is where the roadworks are taking place.

Now given the layout it would seem to me the most logical thing to do would be to set up traffic lights at the blockage, but put the waiting point the other side of the left-hand turn at the merger point. That would mean traffic coming out of it can see the lights and that both it and anyone trying to turn into that lane won't be blocked by the queue entering Stourport.

However I'm still not entirely sure what they've done. At first glance it would appear that they were trying to divert all traffic into the right-hand turn, except this would be an insanely long diversion for the amount of work being done or they're traffic turning right is then supposed to turn left and drive down the wrong side of the road, which wouldn't work for the longer vehicles. Either way traffic from that left-hand turn further up wouldn't know when they could leave.

What is there is almost as confusing the traffic travelling correctly up the left-hand lane is forced into the right-hand lane by cones. This is fun because obviously you get traffic charging up the right-hand lane in an effort to overtake everyone or to turn right. Once in the right hand lane a gap in the cones allowed the traffic to get back into the left-hand lane they'd just left. In the meantime traffic turning right is prevented from doing so by a traffic light which is nonsensical as they'd be naturally prevented from turning by any oncoming traffic anyway. This however makes sense if we were all supposed to turn right and the gap in the cones was a mistake, except that creates the problems I've already mentioned and the layout of the cones was set up after the concrete dividers forced the traffic into the slip road so you'd be led into a kerb if you hadn't noticed the diversion.

I'm baffled! Actually no I'm not this is just the sort of half-arsed thing I've come to expect whenever anything more complicated than 'go around the hole' crops up.

[Additional - Seems I'm not the only one who got annoyed by it, though it appears the original set-up was a four-way set of lights]

On another note the works at the end of High Street have finished, I haven't mentioned them before because they didn't affect the traffic one jot being a closed lane on a two-lane one-way system with plenty of room to manoeuvre; except they finished last week and all the signs are still up warning of roadworks and, although three-quarters of the previously closed is now open, you still have to use the other lane because the cones directing you into the other lane are still up.

Oh and the barricaded pothole in York Street is still present and yes people are still parking to either side of it.