Wyre roundabout plans spark traffic chaos fears among residents

Stephen and Maria Cassidy discuss the plans for the Norcross Roundabout works with John Bailie at at Thornton Methodist Church.

People living along the major route spoke out following one of the drop-in sessions being held by Highways England to let people know about the work set to be carried out on the busy junction from the end of July.

It involves new traffic lights to help control traffic on the busy A585 which has a series of bottle-necks and on which a larger bypass project at Skippool is planned later.

Poulton resident John Bailie said the piecemeal approach to the A585 would not work and just shift congestion to other parts of the road.

He said: “This new junction is complex, traffic light controlled and will create considerable disruption whilst it’s being constructed.

“It may well eventually improve traffic flow but the roads approaching it remain unaltered and unimproved.

“These schemes simply don’t join up, they merely shift the problem elsewhere.

“Considering scale, cost, disruption and limited benefit of all these schemes, the manner in which communication, consultation and overall awareness to the general public is carried out is simply not good enough”.

Residents gather to view the plans for the Norcross Roundabout at Thornton Methodist Church

Maria Cassidy of Skippool Road said: “Many people do not realise how this is going to affect them.

“I do not think the traffic lights will improve the traffic flow. It will just create idling traffic needlessly. If the roundabout was made bigger it would help.

“We had gridlock along the A585 when United Utilities had temporary lights on Amounderness Way for the new offices being built there.

“The disruption from Norcross Roundabout will be much worse.”

The plans for traffic lights on the Norcross Roundabout are revealed to the public

Stanah councillor Ken Minto also pointed to the United Utilities works in May which he said caused miles of jams along the A585.

He added: “Some of the road closures for this Norcross work are for 74 days and these are arterial roads.

“As for lights on Norcross roundabout, all I can say is that when the lights on the Plymouth Road in Layton roundabout failed, the traffic flowed better.”

Roy Haskett of Norbreck said: “I am concerned about the validity of this consultation.

“The traffic lights appears to be over-engineering to me. The money would be better spent widening the road, particularly where the traffic comes from the River Wyre direction.”

A Highways England spokesman said: “The feedback from local stakeholders, including the area’s councils and MPs, and from people attending our public information event earlier this year, has been overwhelmingly supportive of our plans.

“This is an important £5m investment which, in tandem with the Windy Harbour to Skippool bypass, will provide significant improvements to people’s journeys along the A585. In terms of traffic management we have been working hard to devise a construction programme which can deliver the new junction arrangements with as little disruption to people’s journeys as possible although it is inevitable that any project of this scale will mean some short term inconvenience to different road users at different times.

“We will be publicising more information about traffic management before we start work at the end of July.”