The completion of the long-running and often criticised road infrastructure works around Leighton Hospital will not be finished until at least July.
Cheshire East Council confirmed today that the North West Crewe Package highways scheme is in the final stages of works.
However, the original “spring 2024” target completion date has been put back to July.
The new road called “Bob Brown Way” will be open to traffic between Milehouse Roundabout on the A530 and the new hospital roundabout from tomorrow Saturday May 4.
This will form the new access to Leighton Hospital.
There will be a closure on Smithy Lane between the A530 Middlewich Road and the accident and emergency entrance to Leighton Hospital from Tuesday May 7 to Friday May 17.
During this period accident and emergency access will be from the newly-constructed Bob Brown Way.
Smithy Lane – between the A530 Middlewich Road and Leighton Hospital – and Bob Brown Way between Fairfield Roundabout and the hospital roundabout will be opened to traffic on Friday 17 May.
But many motorists have already criticised the new lay-out, in particular the closure of part of Flowers Lane off the A530, and the opening of the new roundabout just a couple of hundred yards from the traffic lights at Bradfield Green.
For several weeks, this junction has seen chaotic queues backing up al the way back towards Pyms Lane as the traffic signals were not amended to take into account the amount of traffic arriving.
The scheme was also criticised last year when the A530 was closed for months, leading to long diversions and delays through Crewe and surrounding villages.
Cheshire East Council say both temporary and permanent signage is in place to direct people to the hospital depending on which direction they are travelling from.
The whole scheme has been horrendously run by CEC and the designer/project manager Jacobs. 3 months into the start and Jacob instructed the main contractor to pause works on the main part of the project due to a “redesign” to accommodate the housing developers. The redesign has cost the scheme millions and the tax payer are expected to fund this. Jacobs relationship with cheshire needs to be reviewed, there is something dodgy going on there. Cheshire have asked us housing developers to contribute to the costs but 90% of the costs are the delay associated with the main contractor. All avoidable if run properly
What a complete nightmare. It’s just taken me 30 minutes to drive the 1.2 mile from the new roundabout south of Leighton to the one near to Flowers Lane lights.
This will not improve even when the rest of the road network opens…. not unless CE do something radical like remove the traffic lights completely, as it is these that are causing the chaos, as they barely let any cars through on each cycle of the lights.
The Channel Tunnel 22+ miles took 6 years to build. Based on the length of the North West Crewe Package highways scheme how long would it have taken CEC to complete the Tunnel? Answers on a toilet roll as you will need the length for a response! Sorry I forgot the tunnel did not have any roundabouts.
Who is or was ‘Bob Brown’?
Which year