Timely upgrade of roundabouts
Maidenhead: £6m project is ‘going according to time’
A £6million road improvement project which will see six roundabouts upgraded across Maidenhead ‘is going according to time’, a meeting heard this week.
A series of junctions in the town are being improved with joint investment from the council and the Thames Valley Local Enterprise Partnership (LEP).
Work started earlier this year on the Stafferton Way/Braywick Road roundabout, with work due to begin on the next project phase, on the Ray Mead
Road roundabout, starting on Monday.
Work here will run daily between 9am and 3.30pm until Friday, February 19.
The size of the roundabout’s pedestrian island will be reduced, creating a wider carriageway that will allow two vehicles to approach it side-by-side.
The borough says the pedestrian island will ‘remain wide enough to allow pedestrians and those with prams, wheelchairs, and other mobility aids to wait safely’.
Although Stafferton Way
has been completed, the meeting heard that resurfacing work still needs to be done here, due to be completed in March.
Other roundabouts in the scheme will be phased later this year. Oldfield Road/Lassell Gardens works will run from February 22 to May 20; Castle Hill from March 8 to May 7; while Cookham Road/Market Street and the Braywick Roundabout near the M4 have not yet been set a date, although the latter is expected to start in November.
The council says it is carrying out this work to ensure infrastructure is ready for ‘an increasing population’, to create more capacity and assist traffic flow.
It hopes that traffic congestion and air quality will both be improved in Maidenhead as a result.
The council’s service lead for transport and infrastructure Tim Golabek was asked by Councillor Helen Taylor (TBF, Oldfield) at the meeting how the works were going to progress without causing traffic chaos.
“Could you give us some assurances that we are not going to end up with a bit of a gridlock around Maidenhead?” she questioned.
Mr Golabek responded by saying the ‘last thing’ he wants to do is create gridlock.
“We have worked very closely with the officer in charge of highways and made sure that these are phased as much as possible,” he said.
“There will be a sequential period of roadworks – we are trying to make sure these are sequential rather than at the same time.”
Maidenhead Missing
Links is another project happening in the town to improve cycling connectivity in Maidenhead.
Cllr Taylor asked whether roundabout works would impact on this. Mr Golabek said: “We should be okay, we are trying to avoid a situation where projects clash.”