General   (General discussion, talk about anything.)

Mr Sedge.

This is my first post on this topic and it is about the junction of Scot Lane & Beech Hill Avenue..........

I go through that junction several times a day normally and have done so for many years now and here is my two penneth on the subject.

Sledge is basically right the problem is because at busy times the sheer volume of traffic is the cause of the delays, made worse lately by road works in other parts of Wigan, pushing the traffic over to that side of Wigan, the road works in Poolstock Lane push the traffic on to Warrington Road at Goose Green, which in turn gets jammed up and pushes the traffic up through Highfield Grange Avenue and Little Lane and through the estates ending up on Scot Lane, with traffic trying to enter Wigan from the Woodhouse Lane side of Wigan.

However sledge, to blame “us” is pathetic and the sort of thing a pillock who works for the Council would say, in fact it is the sort of reply an employee of the Highways Department would come out with, saying that the traffic chaos in Wigan is the publics fault for driving a car, how are we supposed to get to work! public transport I hear you say, I say “what public transport”???? there are no buses or trains which go anywhere near to where I work.

A few months ago the traffic lights where rephased at the junction of Scot Lane, Beech Hill Avenue and Woodhouse Lane, the differences being that the filter arrow for traffic turning right into Woodhouse Lane from Scot Lane and turning right from Woodhouse Drive (Standish Lower Ground side) into Scot Lane are activated at the end of the traffic flow phase, rather than at the beginning of the traffic flow phase and this allows more traffic to flow out of Beech Hill Lane and when the filter arrow for turning right into Woodhouse Lane is activated a filter arrow is activated which allows traffic to flow into Scot Lane from Woodhouse Lane and in my opinion for what it is worth, the traffic flow is much better since the lights were rephrased, with more traffic flowing out of Beech Hill Avenue and Woodhouse Lane.

Now back to what sledge said, I think that what we need is a Council Highways Department, which does not blame “us” for traffic jams, but gets "us" some new roads built in Wigan, other Towns in the country get their roads and bypasses etc built, but here in Wigan we don’t get any new roads do we, in the last week the Council has announced “another” shelved road project, that being the Westwood Park link road, which has been shelved and this adds to the list of other “shelved” road projects in Wigan.

Such has

Route 225 - M6/M58 Orrell to M61 Westhoughton link road.

Wigan Inner Ring Road - New Market Street to Saddle.
Junction extension.

A5225 The Wigan Gateway - M6/M58 Orrell to Atherton.

Westwood Park Link Road – Goose Green into Westwood Park.

And other roads from the past which were never completed.

The Northern M6 link road from Woodhouse Lane to the M6 junction at Shevington, Woodhouse Drive would have been the start of that road if it had been built and there would have been no problem with traffic at the bottom of Beech Hill now, if that road had been built.

The Southern M6 link from the M6 into Wigan, why did construction of the duel carriageway end at Goose Green, the answer is because there used to be a railway bridge there, so why were the railway bridges at Goose Green, Newtown (skew bridge) and Newtown (seven stars) not widened to accomodate the duel carriageway, the answer was to save money, well that saved money in the 1960’s has caused 40 years of motoring misery for “us” Wigner’s.

And finally the Saddle Junction Gyratory System has {{{NOT}}} worked, because the original problem still exists and that is that the traffic goes down to a single carriageway as it travels under the seven stars railway bridge “AND” because the traffic lights at the B&Q junction, which were added after the junction was built, basically screw everything up at the Saddle Junction.

So well done for Wigan Council Highways Department for some 50 years of screwing up Wigan’s roads and what is the long term goal for Wigan’s Highways Department, is it to create “total traffic gridlock” with flashing warning signs saying it is “your own fault for driving a car”!!!!

It makes me wonder if the people in the Highways Department who think up these wonderful road projects are actually “stealing” a living, because they know that none of these projects will go ahead, I say this because every so often a new road project is announced which gets everyone’s hopes up, except the “butterfly” brigade who don’t want any roads to be built anywhere, (nimbys etc) and then after a few years the said road project is “shelved” and then they have to think up another road project up to justify their £80000 a year job, so that they don’t get reviewed (sacked) well I think that the lot of them should be reviewed (sacked) now and replaced with people who know what they are doing and can get road projects planned, funded and built, instead of them always being {shelved}