Caerphilly County Borough Council has announced that proposed improvement works on the Pwll-y-Pant roundabout in Caerphilly will be postponed to avoid clashing with another major scheme, in a move which has been called “disappointing” by Plaid Cymru’s group leader on the council, Cllr Colin Mann.
The council have confirmed that work scheduled on the roundabout at Pwll-y-Pant, Caerphillly – known as the Cedar Tree roundabout – is to be postponed due to major improvements being made at the Fiddler’s Elbow Viaduct, near Abercynon, this summer by RCT and Merthyr County Borough Councils.
Those works are likely to lead to increased volumes traffic across alternate routes, including the Pwll-y-Pant roundabout. The exact start date for the viaduct works is yet to be agreed, but they are anticipated to take around three months to complete.
Caerphilly council hope to resume work on the Pwll-y-Pant roundabout in the summer of 2017, but intends to undertake maintenance works to the roundabout to refresh the road markings in response to concerns over highway safety.
Cllr Colin Mann, who represents Llanbradach, said: “This is very bad news for motorists travelling north and south in the Rhymney Valley.
“It will inevitably lead to increased delays at the busiest times and I’m disappointed that this scheme will not proceed until the summer of 2017 at the earliest. Residents of Llanbradach are already experiencing nose-to-tail traffic on workday mornings, from motorists trying to avoid queues on the by-pass.
“This only goes to prove how premature the Labour council was with its Local Development Plan that proposes to allow developers to build on precious green fields.
“How could the council even think of allowing building when even basic road infrastructure is not in place?
“I’m also disappointed to hear that the Welsh Government is holding back the money available to improve the roundabout’s capacity.”
A Freedom of Information request by Plaid Cymru revealed that of the £5.7m scheme to improve the roundabout, £659,000 has already been spent on preparation works, including felling a host of trees.
Caerphilly County Borough Council, however, says it is still awaiting a formal funding decision from Welsh Government.
I would of knocked over them trees for £300 a trunk.
Yes you would trouble is you’re not on their procurement list of preferred suppliers, which is more difficult to get onto than successfully using a self service checkout without discovering an unexpected item in the bagging area, and the reason it cost £659’000 is that they had two years worth of meetings first to chat about it which cost £600’000.
That was a great analogy. I’m going to have to use that myself.
I supose you can both sort this matter out on your own?
.?
This is an utter waste of money, roundabouts were designed and built to keep traffic moving at busy road intersections, putting traffic lights on this roundabout will only increase congestion and cause more collisions. Some towns in the UK have seen the error of their ways and are now removing traffic lights from roundabouts to ease congestion. We don’t need traffic lights on roundabouts, we need the dimwits who use them to learn what an indicator is for and what lane to approach in for their required exit.
I supose you two can sort this matter out on your own? Pete and Paul that is of course.
Sadly I can’t educate every dimwit on the road on how to negotiate a traffic roundabout correctly, if they could all perform this quite easy driving task properly and competently there wouldn’t be half as much congestion at large roundabouts as there is at present. There was once a very good public service information broadcast on the TV in an attempt to get it through to the dimwits who can’t enter and exit a roundabout without causing maximum frustration to every other road user around them. A simple tip that a police examiner taught to me, on approaching a roundabout prepare to stop but plan to go. The answer is certainly not to spend an obscene amount of taxpayers money on traffic lights that will only result in making the problem much worse, mark my words if traffic lights are installed congestion and accidents will only increase as the dimwits will either not even notice the lights or race through them as they change to red. Some dedicated left turn only lanes would be better but that’s only if there is space to put them in.
Maybe if the wonderful Welsh councils had invested in road building and road improvements rather than squandering billions of pounds of European money covering the landscape with innovation centres and building themselves multi million pound glass towers it would have helped us all to get around a little bit easier.
I find myself in complete agreement. Points well made
And stop painting lines all over roundabouts too.
Totally inconsistant censorship on this site, we may not be reading what people write or want to say, more what the editor of this paper wants us to read.
clashing with other road works that are not even in Caerphilly County !
There was a serious incident on this roundabout Friday PM when two cars fought for a position to exit the roundabout. If the proposed `improvements`? are carried out by CCBC then more cars will will be fed into the roundabout and will therefore need to exit it and it follows more cars, at the same time, will think they can fight for position to leave via one of four exit filters, it will cause an even more confusing situation for less confident drivers, and even more potential danger BY less confident road users.