Road dug up and refilled six times this summer

We asked for help from Kent Messenger readers – and you didn’t let us down.

As the Get Maidstone Moving campaign clicks into gear for its second week, helpful solutions proposed by those who experience the problems on a day-today basis can be put forward to Maidstone council and Kent County Council.

The South Maidstone Action for Roads and Transport forum – or SMART – which is spearheading the campaign, believes smaller changes could be made that would help ease congestion, without being too costly.

Joan Clews, of Tonbridge Road, Maidstone – as she points out, a major road into town and an ambulance route to Maidstone Hospital – said: “There are three sets of temporary traffic lights between the town and Barming for different works.

“When the work isn’t an emergency such as a gas leak, shouldn’t there be some sort of rota for work to be done to avoid so many disruptions to the traffic flow?”

Mrs Clews said firms digging up the road for whatever reason should be obliged to use a double shift pattern to make the most of all the available daylight working hours. She said: “At present they are there for a scant 9am to 3pm.”

A further problem is the number of times different utility companies dig up the same stretch of road. She said: “I have watched the road outside my house being dug up and refilled six times this summer.

“Why can’t the utility companies do their work following on from each other if not simultaneously?

“To dig up the road, bring in temporary traffic lights, do the work, refill the holes, take away the traffic signs, repeatedly, seems so inefficient.”

The problem was made worse by the lack of synchronisation between the different parties involved for each set of works.

She said: “The traffic signs are put out. A day or so later the workmen dig up the road, a few days later workmen arrive to fill in the holes, a few days after that the traffic signage is removed.”

As she wrote, she said the work outside her house had been completed the previous afternoon, yet the traffic lights were still in place at 11am the next day, causing delays.