Drivers face more road works chaos

Jul 1 2009 by Richard Mooney, Wishaw Press

NORTH Lanarkshire Council are confident that the resurfacing of the busy commuter route, Airbles Road, will not cause traffic chaos like the work on Shields Road did earlier this year.

Resurfacing work, costing £355,000, will be carried out on the road over the next seven weeks throughout four different phases beginning with the area from Windmillhill Street to Avon Street by NLC approved contractor MacLay Civil Engineering Ltd.

The resurfacing of the road will be carried out on one side at a time with the initial phase covering Windmillhill Street to The King's Centre and the second down to Avon Street, before the opposite is done on the other side.

Alternative routes have been set up for motorists coming into Airbles Road via Hamilton or Strathclyde Park, who can instead use Hamilton Road and for those travelling via Windmillhill street, a diversion is set up through Brandon Street.

Despite the planned seven weeks of road closures, it is hoped that the work can be completed in four weeks.

However, the road will be open during the fortnight of the Glasgow Fair with no restrictions to motorists.

In February, major work was carried out Shields Road in Muirhouse which left motorists facing traffic chaos during the month-long closure of the road.

Within hours of the work commencing there were major traffic tailbacks along Glasgow Road, Airbles Road and Netherton Road.

David Smart, road network operations manager for NLC said: “The problem we have with Motherwell and Wishaw is that it’s a one road in and one road out scenario, so anything we do on that network tends to amplify any problems we’d get anywhere else on it.

“One of the things about this job is that we thought we’d do it all in the one go when the schools closed for summer, rather than a wee bit this year and a wee bit next year – as you’ll be aware the traffic drops considerably during the school holiday periods.

“We have signed an alternative route should anyone feel that the traffic does build up they don’t have to sit observing the traffic around them. “

Mr Smart explained that he was confident the road works “won’t get to the stage of traffic sitting everywhere.”

He added: “I am confident that with the work going on we should be able to deal with this in the timescale without the same sort of traffic disruption we have had in the past.

“Drivers please be patient, we don’t do this deliberately. We don’t go out our way to disrupt the traffic, we only do these works because they are required and we ask drivers to be patient with us.”