Roadworks '˜could cause years of gridlock'

A Hull Council scrutiny meeting was told a major upgrade of the city’s Garrison Road roundabout on the A63 was expected to start “some time” next year to avoid clashing with the far larger £220m upgrade of the A63 Castle Street, now due to begin in 2019.

Jimmy Holmes, project manager for Highways England, said the £6.3m Garrison Road scheme, which was included in last week’s Budget, should be “done and dusted” by the time work starts on the Castle Street scheme, which is due to wrap up in 2023-2024.

Thousands of bodies have to be dug up from an old cemetery on Mytongate before the three-year construction programme begins.

Mr Holmes said another arm of Highways England was leading on the Garrison Road scheme, which would be built over a 12-month period.

He added: “We obviously want to make sure it doesn’t clash with ours and causes gridlock and it can’t start until City of Culture is out of the way.”

But Mike Ibbotson, Hull Council’s Transportation Policy Manager said they still had concerns about keeping traffic moving during the roadworks.

He said: “We, as officers, still have big issues with keeping the city moving and making sure that what they do doesn’t gridlock us for four years or more. We have to make sure that what they do at Garrison Road works.”

Mr Ibbotson said their other main concern was when the £11m landbridge over the A63 at Princes Quay which will replace the current pedestrian crossings will be built.

Hull Council wants it done as early as possible, but Highways England has said that could prove too expensive.

Mr Ibbotson said: “We have asked if at all possible can we have the iconic bridge in early in the programme but I am aware it isn’t necessarily the easiest way for them to build the scheme.”

He said they would be poring over documents which will be issued in the next few months as part of the development consent order, the equivalent of a planning application.

The council will have to decide its stance on the plans which will become the subject of public hearings.

Mr Holmes said building the bridge first was “probably not the most efficient, cheapest way to build the scheme” and they were looking at a temporary bridge as one option. He said: “We have to get people up and over. We can’t have them walking through a large construction site.”

He added: “As a minimum we have to keep traffic moving and make sure it doesn’t block up the rest of Hull’s network.”

The city was named last month as the ninth most congested in the UK. Coun Martin Mancey, a retired highways engineer who holds the transport portfolio, said it was going to be “extremely difficult to keep everybody happy” but they would work with Highways England and contractors to get the least disruptive solution. He said: “It is clearly a vital scheme - the fact this city is in the upper echelons of the most congested in the country is largely down to the problems of Castle Street.”

However Mr Mancey said the long-term permanent solution was an extension of the M62 round the north of the city - but the chances of that happening in his life-time was “pretty remote.”