Wrexham’ poor road infrastructure
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Forgive me if this has been discussed before, but I work over the border in Denbigshire and when talking to colleagues they often comment on how bad they think that the road system is in Wrexham. One colleague even asked me if the traffic around the Maelor is always that bad? I had to say that yes , it is a lot of the time.
They generally hate having to come to the Maelor for hospital appointments because of the road system here, and thinking about it it really is pretty awful isn’t it? Mainly down to bad planning from what I can see. We now have one of only three general hospitals in the whole of North Wales, a University and a shopping centre, but the roads have never been properly developed to deal with the excess traffic that comes from this. Most of the main routes into the town centre are gridlocked in the mornings and evenings, but special mention has to go to Kings Mills road which is periodically gridlocked at various times during the day due to the numerous traffic lights along it. I have been told by a Taxi driver that Kings Mills got worse after the mornic decision to make Derby road a one way system. Further along there is the bottle neck down by Lidl, which would easily be relieved by making the road wider.
There is the dangerous and narrow railway bridge in Stansty, much chaos ensued when the road was temporarily made one way. Why not just put traffic lights there? Or even better remove the walk way and putt a pedestrian brudge bridge over the railway track. Andlast and by no means least the absolute dogs dinner of a road that runs through the retail park where Dunhelm Mill is. Whoever designed that one must be blind and stupid..
I can’t help but think that Wrexham could benefit from having a ring road like in Chester, but where one would go I don’t know? Either way are road network is a mess isn’t it?
If you put a footbridge over the railway track it would be a hell of a climb, especially with children.
A potential easier solution would be to create an underpass under the railway at the side of the existing footpath at the same level to avoid gradients. You see engineering projects on the TV where tunnels underpasses are created without disrupting services for trains or roads– engineering technology is available — maybe the will and finance are not!
@WrecsamGirl 19867 wrote:
I can’t help but think that Wrexham could benefit from having a ring road like in Chester, but where one would go I don’t know? Either way are road network is a mess isn’t it?
There is a top section of an ‘inner ring road’ at the moment. The rest of the route is rather narrow and has lots of junctions and you would probably need to demolish some things to do anything about it.
You could always make the whole of the narrow southern section (Halfords-Rhosddu Road) one way so the town centre would be in the middle of a giant roundabout? :DThere’s nearly an outer ring road – shame they didn’t make the southern industrial estate link road dual carriageway and carry it on to the Johnstown junction on the A483. I think WAG have more pressing things to sort out up here though.
Congestion in Wrexham does seem disproportionate to the number of people who lube here though. The council isn’t exactly doing anything to encourage people to leave their cars at home either.
@pete 19871 wrote:
Congestion in Wrexham does seem disproportionate to the number of people who lube here though…
Think you may want to correct that!
@pete 19871 wrote:
Congestion in Wrexham does seem disproportionate to the number of people who lube here though. .
Are you trying to say that wrexham has too many tossers? Many girls will agree. :D
I agree with the first post, in that Wrexham certainly has it’s fair share of bottlenecks, which get gridlocked at certain times of the day. Some areas are indeed a bit of a mess, especially the Dunhelm area.
However, a bit of perspective. I work all over the UK, and I can tell you that this problem is not unique to Wrexham. Pretty much every town and city I have worked in (and that’s a lot over the years), has similar problems. I would say that Wigan and Crewe stand out as being much worse than Wrexham. Huddersfield is ten times worse. And don’t get me started on Warrington.
I think the problem lies with the fact that towns in the Uk have been around a lot longer than cars, and where never meant to accommodate everyone owning a car. It’s OK for large cities, as they have the space, and funds, to improve things. But for towns, your always going to struggle, unless you flatten the town and re-design it around cars.
That being said, I’m sure the area around Dunhelm could have been designed much better.
With regards to Stansty road, I have been using it for 12 years, and never once had a problem, and never once thought that it is dangerous. A bit awkward sometimes, yes, but dangerous, no. The best solution would be to simply replace the bridge. Expensive, yes, but it’s a routine project. Dozens of bridge replacements are happening across the North West as part of the Northern Hub project, and I have worked on bridge replacement projects, and they are fairly routine. The best alternative would indeed be the pedestrian footbridge. That would involve steps to climb though! Or ramps ins tea dog steps for disabled access. It would be Network Rail who would have to carry out these projects though, as they own all the rail infrastructure including bridges.
I reckon that if they had left the roads alone, instead of chicanes, speed bumps, one way systems & pedestrianisation, oh & cycle tracks & narrowing them, they would have been just fine. Cyclists don’t use cycle tracks, there are no more pedestrians than there ever was & the mini pimples that spring up instead of give way signs every time a housing estate is built are a waste of space. I seem to remember that when all the traffic lights packed up in Carlisle that the traffic flowed much better than when they worked. They haven’t made many new roads in Wrexham, just made them undriveable.
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