The Peterborough Evening Telegraph
Gridlock after seven car rush hour crash
Bus services hit as traffic grinds to a halt across the city
There was gridlock across the city as a seven car parkway crash caused long rush hour delays across Peterborough.
The crash happened at about 7.45am on Wednesday morning between Stanground and Boongate on the southbound carriagway of the Frank Perkins Parkway.
The road had to be closed because of the debris and wreckage from the crash. There were queues back as far as the Eye Roundabout on the parkway. While Cambridgeshire police said there were no serious injuries in the crash, the recovery operation took several hours, leading to queues and traffic jams across the road network as commuters hunted rat runs and back streets to avoid the delays. The congestion caused by the crash, combined with the daily delays that result from the Rhubarb Bridge roadworks, meant a number of bus services were affected in the city centre. Three Delaine services were unable to stop on Bourges Boulevard after being caught in 30 minute delays. The jams did not clear until late in the morning. A Peterborough City Council spokeswoman said severe delays on the city road networks were rare because of the parkway system. She said: “This was a multi-vehicle collision which closed the parkway for a significant period of time during rush hour traffic. “The drivers who normally travel on this route were therefore diverted onto other roads instead, causing congestion. “Thankfully we don’t get collisions of this scale often in our city and thanks to our parkway structure, drivers normally experience very short commuting times compared to many other more congested cities in the UK.”