The Welsh Government has provided £350,000 in funding to Caerphilly County Borough Council to maintain two lanes around the Pwllypant roundabout during construction work, it has been revealed.
The figure was disclosed to the council’s opposition Plaid Cymru group following a request under the Freedom of Information Act.
But Councillor Colin Mann, leader of the Plaid Cymru group, has questioned why the council and its contractors needed to revert to one lane working on January 8.
The response to the request said: “The Welsh Government has provided additional finance to Caerphilly County Borough Council. Up to £350,000 has been awarded to the Council through the Local Transport Fund grant this financial year. This is in addition to the £1.5 million awarded to the Council through the fund in 2017/18. Funding is to maintain two lane working during this financial year’s construction phase.”
Cllr Mann, who represents Llanbradach, said: “The council told members that it wanted to maintain two lanes around the roundabout but a single lane had to return for eight to ten weeks in the new year and could be even longer depending on the weather.
“Well, according to the Welsh Government it is clear that the funding was provided to maintain two lane working during 2017/18.
“According to continuous posts on Twitter by @PwllypantRound, delays last week were up to 40 minutes at peak times which is clearly unacceptable for both motorists driving up and down the valley to work and leisure and for businesses facing loss of trade.
“The biggest complaint has been about the delays and the main cause of the delays has been the imposition of single-lane working. I would expect the council to take this opportunity to get away from the single-lane situation.”
A spokesman for Caerphilly County Borough Council said: “The Pwllypant improvement scheme is a complex engineering project which is being undertaken within a very constrained site.
“The original traffic management plan involved single lane operation for the whole of the 52 week contract period, but additional funding from Welsh Government has allowed us to work with the contractor to review these proposals.
“As a result, the single lane arrangements will only be required for eight to ten weeks to allow essential elements of the works to be completed.
“The council has listened to the views of motorists and the local business community and we welcome this additional funding which has allowed us to make positive changes in response.”
• Access to and from Caerphilly’s Pontygwindy Road will be blocked at the Pwyllypant roundabout for two further weekends because of drainage works.
The road will close on the weekend January 27. The closure will take place between 8am Saturdays until 6am Mondays.
It will be interesting to see what additional disruption occurs when the Caerphilly 10k takes place in May !
Not to mention the Velephon!
I forgot about that one !
I now know what CCBC stands for……..
Complete Chaos Before Commonsense !
By May the virtual flyover and hypothetical tunnels will be complete. Hypothetically there’ll be virtually no more disruption than caused by last year’s event…
What a strange comment. Why even mention Caerphilly 10k? That’s got nothing to do with these roadworks. Caerphilly should embrace the 10k – getting people fitter and healthier but no, the residents can’t leave their house on a Sunday for a few hours and the sky falls down.
These roadworks are a disaster for businesses and commuters and the sooner two lanes are back the better.
Not a strange comment – I fully support the 10k run.
I am just wondering how caerphilly council will manage the roadworks ?
Normally the road between Pwll-y-Pant and Bedwas bridge is subject to traffic control to ensure safety of the runners – however surely the roadworks will impact in this regard ?
I see, apologies I misunderstood and thought you were one of the residents who continually complain about it. The race does touch the roundabout and then heads down behind crossways so yea there will be more to organise this year. It has been brought forward this year too so the roadworks will still be in full swing you’d expect ?
Maybe I could have worded my comments better.
No my only concern is that the council manage the roadworks properly – then runners will remain safe and the event can be enjoyed by all participants.
As someone who runs for exercise and enjoyment,like you I feel it is an event which helps promote wellbeing and fitness for people of all abilities.
Given the works appear to be designed to speed up previously experienced traffic snarl-ups on the approaches to the roundabout, and by extending the previous two lane roundabout to three lanes?, where will all the speeded up traffic go to exit the roundabout? i.e. towards Newport, the road returns to a one lane exit 100 metres or so beyond the roundabout, bottleneck alert!; the exit into Pontygwindy Road stays at a one lane exit; Bottleneck alert!; The exit towards Trecenydd is being extended to a two lane exit; until one gets to just beyond the existing railway bridge over the road, and just BEFORE the bridge OVER MILL ROAD at which point the road will revert to a one lane road; Bottleneck Alert; It certainly `appears` to me that these works will NOT improve the bottleneck caused by heavy traffic on the Roundabout; it will simply EXTEND it to points beyond it which will become blocked and the tailbacks will STILL block up the roundabout at peak times, (which was the previous problem these expensive extensive in inconvenient works were supposed to eradicate?;
You only get a bottleneck when the road capacity is smaller than the incoming flow irrespective of the number of lanes. The roundabout will always attenuate the flow – they’re designed to – so for the system to work at capacity the roads can, and usually do, have less lanes than roundabouts.
That qualifies and restates my concerns;
Trefor, I fear you will be proven to be correct. All this “investment” will be for very little benefit. I for one believe that multi-lane roundabouts are inherently more confusing and dangerous – I’ve seen studies that show increase accident rates. To your point you are correct, the bottlenecks are merely being moved and not resolved. Only a very radical rebuild of the road network in the Valley will address the problems.
I have also just been told Ian that the `roundabout` and egress roads are to be governed and controlled with `Traffic Lights` That should help, SIC.