The long-awaited work to improve the flow of traffic on the A350 Western Way Melksham, past the Asda store, is to finally start on 26th November, ending on 4th January next year.
The work, which includes improved signage and work on the traffic lights, has been held up since last March. Work was due to start in August, however, the council’s contractors, BBLP, were unable to provide a temporary traffic safety management scheme.
When Asda applied to build their Melksham store, the supermarket giant stated, “The proposal includes an all-direction entry point to the A350, which will be designed to improve traffic flow and provide easy access.” However, since the store was opened in May 2011 delays to the traffic flow along the A350 past Asda and the configuration of the traffic lights have caused much criticism from local people.
In January this year, Wiltshire Council reported that it had hired contractors to reprogramme the traffic lights and improve traffic flow on the A350 near the store. However, local people reported that there seemed to be no improvement and when Melksham News revealed that Wiltshire Council had paid contractors £50,000 to sort out the traffic lights, the town saw red and condemned the cost as “appalling and disgusting”.
In a further twist, when Melksham News contacted Wiltshire Council with local people’s complaints that there seemed little improvement, the council admitted in March this year that the traffic lights had still not been sorted, despite the cost.
At that time, a spokesperson from Wiltshire Council confirmed that they did not know why the lights had not been reprogrammed yet saying, “The person who is overseeing the project is away, so we cannot get any definitive answers.
“There is no digging up that needs to be done. We may need to go on site to reprogramme the signals, if they are not hooked up to our programming computer. But at the moment, there is no time frame for this.”
