Report on bridge closures delayed until after elections
AFINAL verdict on whether to make five controversial bridge closures in Newcastle permanent will not arrive until May at the very earliest, council bosses have confirmed.
Vehicles have been blocked from crossing Salters Bridge in Gosforth, Castle Farm Road Bridge next to Jesmond Dene, Haldane Bridge in Jesmond, the Argyle Street Bridge near Manors Metro station, and Stoneyhurst Bridge in South Gosforth since last August.
The divisive trials, which could legally last 18 months under the council’s experimental traffic order, were imposed as a means of reducing ratrunning through residential streets and to give more space to pedestrians and cyclists, but have sparked a backlash from many residents.
A six-month consultation on the experiment ended last month, after which 7,000 fake comments had to be deleted following a “malicious” attempt to skew the feedback exercise, but it has now been confirmed that transport bosses will issue no decision until after May’s local elections.
The council is also yet to publish a promised interim report detailing the initial results from the online consultation’s remaining 10,000 responses, despite pledging its arrival within “days” when the hijack attempt was announced on February 18.
Graham Grant, the authority’s head of transport, presented a graph to councillors last week which showed the slight majority of the comments from the Commonplace website leaned negative.
But, despite that being released, the council has so far refused to issue more detailed results showing how many people supported or rejected each of the individual bridge closures.
Salters Bridge generated the most responses, more than 3,000, while debate over the Stoneyhurst site has also been fierce.
Mr Grant told members of the council’s overview and scrutiny committee last week that the overall majority of negative feedback was only a “general feeling across the entire five bridges, it is not to say that it was equally balanced across all of them”.
Asked why the report had not arrived more than a week after it was expected to be released, a city council spokesperson said: “We would like to thank everyone who took part in our consultation on the closure of local bridges to traffic and our initial report will be published in the coming days.
“The consultation has generated a substantial volume of responses through lots of different channels, that all need to be compiled into one report.
“We appreciate that there is considerable interest in this report, but this process takes time and we would ask people to please bear with us.”
The council said that the bridges review will go on throughout purdah – the six-week pre-election period in which authorities must avoid making any politically controversial announcements. Until a decision is issued, the bridges will remain closed to traffic.
It was also confirmed that separate decisions on the future of the five crossings could be announced at different times.
One member of the Room For Us All group, which has opposed the Stoneyhurst Bridge closure, said the delays “have added insult to injury”.
They added: “It is about time that they did the decent thing and re-opened the bridge.
“Until they do, they can rest assured that the fight will go on.”
Audrey Macnaughton, a long-term supporter of efforts to ban traffic from Salters Bridge, said: “There is a bit of anxiety among people waiting for the decision.
“We have been used to it, because we had the two-year closure before which we knew was temporary. It’s the hope that kills you in the end.
“But we have also said that the longer the closure is in place for, the more the benefits become clear.”
Salters Bridge was previously closed during lengthy roadworks on neighbouring Killingworth Road, but the area became a hotspot for speeding cars after the medieval bridge re-opened in October 2019.