Bridge signs ‘could have been £141k cheaper’
IT’S FAIR to say that when the cost of the new signs on the Prince of Wales Bridge was revealed, people weren’t very impressed.
The signs were placed across the carriageway in May after the Severn Bridge was renamed. The change of name itself was heavily criticised with more than 38,000 people signing a petition against the decision.
Through a Freedom of Information request made by the Western Mail, it was revealed that the signs cost a total of £216,513.39.
But now a family business in Wales has claimed it could have saved the Government thousands and doesn’t understand why it cost so much in the first place.
Standard Signs and Traffic Systems, based in Newport, makes tens of thousands of road signs a year. It includes everything from tiny parking signs to large signs that sit on motorway gantries.
Owner Sam Hassani said: “With regards to why that thing (the Prince of Wales Bridge signs) cost so much, I couldn’t tell you. I know it definitely wouldn’t have been that much if it’d been done here.”
Sam estimates his company could have done the whole job for around a third of the price. He said each sign would have cost around £6,000 and that the total cost for the project would have been around £75,000.
He said this would have included around £10,000 for the necessary steelwork, up to £20,000 for the installation and a cost of around £3,000 per night to close the motorway.
Sam said: “I think £75,000 would have done it. And that’s closing the motorway for around four nights too.
“I can’t get anywhere near the £200,000 figure.”
Sam said some of the cost may have also gone into extending the steel structure the signs are attached to.
The signs were designed with the famous Welsh dragon at the top but with a blue tongue and white collar around its neck which is to do with the title of the Prince of Wales.
A UK Government spokeswoman said: “The dragon depicted in the signs on the Prince of Wales Bridge originates from the historic Coat of Arms of the Prince of Wales.”
When asked how much the Prince of Wales bridge signs cost, Highways England said: “Working on behalf of [the Wales Office] Highways England was commissioned to manage the design,
creation, installation and the associated traffic management at a total cost of £216,513.39.”
The UK Government said it was all part of the decision to remove the tolls which would save drivers money.
But the cost was described by former Plaid Cymru leader Leanne Wood as “absurd, wasteful and ill-judged”.
A UK Government spokeswoman said at the time: “The Prince of Wales Bridge was named as part of the UK Government’s decision to remove the tolls on both crossings, saving drivers more than £100m per year. Highways England has responsibility for the operation, ongoing maintenance and costs of the crossings between England and Wales.”
It was after the huge cost was revealed that Sam contacted the Western Mail to describe his shock at how much it cost.
Although it’s an “ultra-competitive” industry, Sam said the prices have hit the floor in recent years.
The company has plenty of experience in making motorway signs and during a visit to its factory staff were busy making a massive sign ready for an Irish motorway.
Set up in 1983, Standard Signs and Traffic Systems now makes around 30,000 signs a year that end up all over the world.
Sam, 45, said they have produced signs for the Ryder Cup and Nato summit in Newport, the Rugby World Cup in Cardiff, signs in the Falkland Islands and Libyan oilfields and they have also worked for the US Air Force.
Sam said: “We have done a lot of signs for people who have model railways in their back garden.
“We’ve done the signs in the Falkland Islands. We did a complete police car livery system for Baghdad after the war. It was for the US Air Force.
“They were having a lot of problems with insurgents spraying ‘police’ on the side of a car and then kidnapping people – and they wanted a system that couldn’t be replicated. We’ve got stuff everywhere.”
Sam estimates that around half of all the signs in south Wales come from their factory, which has grown from four staff to 14 in the last few years.
Although it’s become a lot easier now, Standards Signs and Traffic Systems is still bound by strict rules on how the signs need to look.
With ‘style guides’ for each council, the signs need to be spot on. Sam said: “Everything is set from the thickness of the border, the distance between letters and so on and so on. It’s all really crucial. And you can’t deviate from it at all.”