Toll bar: are we going round in circles?
CLOSING the Toll Bar roundabout next week will be a pain for thousands of users, but if it’s necessary to get the job done then so be it, there’s little we can do but deal with the inconvenience.
I have no doubt we’ll see that the delivery team have done a sterling job fulfilling the contract once the junction reopens. But whether the project was actually the right one for this junction remains to be seen.
Schoolkids will be safer, though the stats showed there were few problems before, but what I’m worried about is the potential for even more severe traffic jams.
We won’t know the operational reality until lockdown is over and all pupils are back at Tollbar, that will be the acid test.
Carriageway widening should potentially improve the morning commute into Grimsby and Cleethorpes, though repeated stoppages for the crossing lights might counteract these gains. But there appears be e no provision in the work k for more space to deal with the evening rush. The existing single lane, which becomes a very narrow two just yards before the roundabout, seems to have been retained. This bottleneck is one of the reasons for the huge tailbacks towards Tesco every late afternoon, so imagine the effect of repeated stoppages for the lights on the length of the queues.
I think it will be a major talking point later in the year.
While scrapping the rou roundabout was a nonsense plan, t the cosmetic modifications we are seeing are not a long term answer to traffic flow.
I’ll forever maintain that an underpass, overpass or a bridge were better solutions, or failing that a two lane carriageway in both directions, moving the roundabout westwards and using some land from the school.