Laira Bridge Scheme

The second phase of improvements on the city’s Eastern Corridor will begin on Monday 3 September.

The work, being carried out by Plymouth Transport and Highways, will include changes to the junction of Finnigan Road and Laira Bridge Road to improve traffic flow over Laira Bridge and provide better crossing facilities for pedestrians and cyclists.

This junction regularly suffers from queuing traffic, particularly at peak times, and the crossing facilities are poor, with no pedestrian signals and narrow refuge islands. To help reduce congestion and improve journey times for people travelling over Laira Bridge, the right hand turn from Laira Bridge Road into Finnigan Road is going to be removed. This will significantly reduce the amount of time that traffic has to be held at this junction. It will also allow for new signal-controlled crossings to be installed across Finnigan Road and Laira Bridge Road, meaning pedestrians and cyclists can cross safely. Both crossings will link directly to the National Cycle Network route on Finnigan Road.

Access to the Faraday Mill industrial estate and other commercial areas in Cattedown will be maintained, via the new Embankment Lane, Cattewater Road and Faraday Road (in addition to existing access from Gdynia Way and Shapters Road).

To help minimise overall disruption on the road network, essential programmed maintenance work on Laira Bridge will be carried out at the same time. This work, which will improve and prolong the life of the structure, includes re-waterproofing the bridge decking, replacing expansion joints, resurfacing the road and installing new lighting columns.

Councillor Mark Coker, Cabinet Member for Transport said: "It’s important that we improve traffic flow over and around Laira Bridge and reduce delays experienced by drivers. This is a vital artery into the city and we’re committed to making improvements that help motorists get around. The work on the bridge has to be done now or its condition will deteriorate further, which will require even more repair work at greater expense. It makes sense to co-ordinate the junction improvements with the bridge maintenance so there is a single set of works and future disruption is kept to a minimum. We will be monitoring traffic flow during the works to ensure we are doing everything we can to minimise delays.”

The Council wrote to residents and businesses in the area about the junction improvement works as part of a three-week consultation in early June. It also held a drop-in event in June, where members of the project team were on hand to provide more information about the proposals and answer any questions. Local bus companies have been informed and are currently reviewing their timetables.

The removal of the right hand turn into Finnigan Road will be implemented from the start of the works. For the duration of the project there will be one lane open in each direction over Laira Bridge and priority for public transport will be maintained wherever possible.

Other diversions will be in place during the works as part of a phased traffic management plan – these will be clearly signed and maps will be published on this website shortly. While works take place, the following restrictions will apply:

• Vehicles will not be able to turn right from Laira Bridge Road into Finnigan Road (this will be a permanent change) or left into Finnigan Road from Faraday Road. (Traffic travelling towards the city centre on Laira Bridge Road will still be able to turn left into Finnigan Road until the last stages of works).
• Traffic from Finnigan Road will not be able to turn left or right onto Laira Bridge Road.
• When works are taking place on the northern carriageway (outbound lanes) of Laira Bridge, traffic from The Ride will not be able to turn right onto Billacombe Road to travel into the city and traffic from the city will not be able to turn left onto The Ride.

The £400,000 junction improvements are being funded from the Department for Transport’s Local Sustainable Transport Fund and the Council’s capital budget. The £740,000 maintenance work on the bridge is funded through the capital budget. Work is expected to finish before the Christmas shopping period but is heavily weather dependent.

Plymouth City Council

This is an area which has seen a massive amount of change over the last few years and it seems over the next few years too. This wonderful overhead view from the early 1980’s seems light years ago!

From the Cyberheritage Collection

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Bloggers

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• Today I take you up into the foothills out Mount Snowdon, with the photos shown here being taken in Pen-Y-Pass at the base of the iconic Welsh mountain PTOTPA
• As the euphoria and mutual back-slapping over South Yorkshire ITA’s decision to abandon its quality contract scheme dies down, I began to wonder if the dreaded law of unintended consequences was about to rear its head again. Omnibuses
• In this day and age (as they say) perhaps the residents of delightful Abergynolwyn should be pleased to have a bus at all; but fbb does wonder whether more people might use the service if they could have some clear printed material on the mantelpiece. Public Transport Experience
• I enjoyed owning the “DAF Leopard” for four years. TGP
• First in Devon and Cornwall will soon be pulling out of North Devon altogether. They'll only have one service left into North Cornwall too - as the Plymouth operated tendered route 76 will continue into Bude. Southern England Bus Scene

In the news

• FIRSTGROUP is pursuing bids for three more UK rail franchises this year after scooping the West Coast service from Virgin. Scotsman

Gdynia Way

May 2010

August 2010 Closed

November 2011

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Open

From Tuesday 1 November there is a completely new way of travelling through and around the East End of Plymouth, as the new Embankment Lane link road and the new outbound lane on Gdynia Way open to traffic. This marks the completion of the main elements of the East End Transport Scheme and 18 months of construction.

At the heart of the scheme is the creation of a new public transport corridor along Embankment Road which will improve the reliability of bus services. New facilities have been developed for buses, cyclists and pedestrians throughout the East End, promoting more sustainable and healthy ways to travel.

Embankment Lane will provide a new route for traffic travelling from Plympton to Plymstock and for local traffic accessing the East End Community.

Gdynia Way’s new outbound lane will provide a new route for traffic heading to Plympton and the A38. The changes will significantly reduce congestion and improve traffic flow in the East End, particularly on Embankment Road and Heles Terrace where traffic is expected to reduce by half.

Overall the scheme will enhance the local environment and increase the quality of life for the community. It is the largest highways project to be undertaken in Plymouth in over 25 years and will provide new infrastructure that will allow Plymouth to grow and prosper into the future.

The attached newsletter explains how to get around the East End on the new road layout, as well as highlighting the key improvement works that have taken place over the last 18 months.

  

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Its been a long weekend

Had a day off blogging as was at St Mellion Golf Centre on Monday / Tuesday for a wedding. Really enjoyed it too. On the way home came across the Western greyhound Solo on the 576 which seems like a good excuse to post a photo of one of their buses this morning...

Finally just to bring things a bit more up to date I post the Facebook jottings from our bus companies yesterday - the first day of the Gdynia Way closure

Plymouth Citybus 1st June 2010

Because of the commencement of major roadworks in the Prince Rock area we are experiencing severe delays to our running times, please accept our apologies for the impact this is having on our services. We are currently working with the relevant authorities and council departments to try and resolve this issue. Further updates and notices will be posted as and when we able to provide more information.

FIRST PLYMOUTH 1st June 2010

Unfortunately due to the Eastern Corridor works diversions and lane closures at Cattedown there are delays to services. We are doing our best to get to you as soon as we can and apologise for any inconvenience caused due to circumstances beyond our control.
Who could have predicted that! Seriously I do hope that things settle down soon...


There may be gaps in coverage again over the next week as my new PC is finally going back to Mesh for them to fix it as I have now given up on it and totally lost confidence in it. When it works it is brilliant - but you never know when its going to crash again. I will be reverting back to the old machine so any gaps shouldn't be too long.

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Uncle Terry

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The freight operator First GBRf has been sold to Eurotunnel. The deal follows the purchase of EWS by Deutsche Bahn, and follows months of speculation about First's intentions over its freight arm -- which it acquired almost by accident in 2003. More...

31 May 2010

15:26 FIRST PLYMOUTH: Meet the Manager event, tomorrow 1030 - 1430, Place de Brest, City Centre. Click here for more information

Disruption will be minimal?

I came across this poster in a bus shelter on Embankment Road yesterday and was intrigued to read the line at the top:

Disruption to bus services should be minimal

I must admit I am not quite so sure that this will be the case. If you look at the bottom of this post you will see the twitter Facebook feeds for Citybus and First and see the problems they having yesterday, and this was just down to the preparations for the main road works that start next week!

First lets have a quick map so we can see where the problems will occur...

At the moment traffic from Plympton / A38 comes off Embankment Road (4) and then goes into Gdynia Way (5) and heads into the city which takes it underneath the Heles Terrace junction (1). When Gdynia Way is closed there will be two lanes from Embankment Road (4) with one lane for Plymstock traffic turning left into Heles Terrace (2) and one lane heading straight up Embankment Road where it will then switch back to the other carriage way (6). This section is currently one way taking traffic out of the City. You can see below that the white lines have already been added to Embankment Road for two way working.

Now in theory this should not be too much of a problem as traffic is already pretty much single lane to Plymstock and single lane into Gdynia Way and indeed single lane down Embankment Road heading out of the City. The Plymstock bound traffic from the City Centre should be diverted away from the area so this should help a bit as well.
So what is my worry?
This is the view looking towards Plymstock yesterday (taken at point 7 on the map) you can see the queue of traffic goes way down the road and onto Laira Bridge itself.

 

All of this traffic is waiting for the lights on Heles Terrace (1)

At the moment these lights are geared up for the volume of traffic that turns right here with just a few buses and local traffic coming off Heles Terrace and trying to turn right into Laira Bridge Road. None of this really affects City bound traffic as it passes below the junction along Gdynia Way. I recall sitting on a 50 heading towards town once when Gdynia Way was closed due to flooding when all City bound traffic was coming off Heles Terrace and trying to turn right (1) where the lights were allowing three or fours cars through at a time giving priority to traffic coming down Laira Bridge Road towards Plymstock and then from Plymstock turning right. Without the Plymstock bound traffic coming down Laira Bridge Road it wouldn't be quite so bad but City bound traffic will still have to wait for outward bound traffic from Heles Terrace at the lights (2)

Traffic coming out of the City will also have to wait for this traffic, as it already does, but will have the additional problem of buses stopping.

At the moment traffic can get passed the buses at this stop, but this wont be possible when the road is two way. There is a further stop on Embankment Road (just up from point 4) which will also halt traffic behind it, which will affect all traffic from the City and Plymstock.

You can see the new layout has been marked out on the road surface the bus stop being the point where outward bound traffic starts to split into two lanes but the current outbound lane will soon be the main inward lane. The poster does seem to suggest that these stops will remain in use.
As I said at the start of this long rambling post both bus companies were affected yesterday. I caught a Citybus 50 from Asda and there were 4 50's passing through the complex at the same time, 2 following each other towards Derriford and the one I was on was caught up at the traffic lights by the next one heading towards town. I saw several examples of this with First service 2 also seeing bunching at Laira Bridge. When the main works start and Gdynia Way closes its all going to be very fraught and cause major jams. Hopefully once locals get used to it and find other ways around the area it might settle down a bit but I do wonder if it would help matters if the traffic coming out of Heles Terrace (2) could be diverted through Cattedown (1) up to Cattedown Roundabout and then down Embankment Road.

(I realise this might not be popular though, but then no one is going to be that happy while all this major work goes on anyway!)

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Uncle Terry

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28 May 2010

12:00 FIRST Download a copy of Plymouth City Council's leaflet with Gdynia Way closure diversion map from Tue 1 Jun - end Oct here
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16:22 FIRST Traffic caused by roadwork's at Prince Rock seems to have cleared now. Thanks for your patience during delays.
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East End scheme hots up

Gdynia Way to close from 1st June, expect fun and games!

This is Plymouth: COMMUTERS face months of chaos in the east of Plymouth from the beginning of next month. The first phase of the East End transport scheme will see Gdynia Way closed for five months. The road, which is the main route into the city from Plympton and Plymstock, is being widened to three lanes as part of an 18-month, £19million improvement scheme. The worst of the disruption will be in the first phase, from June to October this year, with the closure of Gdynia Way. Early work has already started in the area, and on Monday, June 1, contractors Amey will begin demolishing and rebuilding Elliott Road bridge. Drivers who use Gdynia Way now will be diverted through either Embankment Road or the Cattedown industrial estate, along Finnigan Road/Shapters Road. The £19m scheme, which has won funding from the Government's Community Infrastructure Fund and is supported by the Regional Development Agency's Regional Infrastructure Fund, will provide better transport infrastructure that will boost the area's local economy and support the future growth of our city. At the heart of the scheme will be a new public transport corridor along Embankment Road heading east, which will help improve the reliability of existing local bus services as well as the future Eastern Corridor high quality public transport service. The scheme is expected to nearly halve the amount of traffic using Embankment Road and significantly enhance the local environment and quality of life for residents living in this area. There will be new and re-surfaced roads and pavements, new off-road cycle paths to better link the city centre with the East End, Plympton and Plymstock and improved pedestrian links offering better access to local shops and amenities in the area. With a scheme of this size some disruption is inevitable, but we are doing everything that we can to manage the construction of the scheme as effectively as possible to keep this to a minimum and maintain the flow of public transport through the area. Plymouth City Council PDF Files explaining the diversions better can be found here   I am currently in the final stages of putting together a new design for Plymothian Transit to give it a fresher look and also to tidy things up and reduce the clutter at the bottom of the page. You may will certainly notice the difference when it goes live sometime in the next day or so, hopefully you wont notice too many ’issues’ as I am ironing these out on a test site. WATCH THIS SPACE!

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East End Transport Scheme

First phase work starts next week

Enabling works will begin next week for the first phase of construction for the East End Transport Scheme. Initial construction work is set to begin on a section of the new outbound lane for Gdynia Way between Cattedown Roundabout and Shapters Road on Tuesday 4 May. Gdynia Way will remain open to traffic but there will be some lane closures at times. Access to Shapters Road and Barbican Approach from Gdynia Way may also be restricted at times during the work and, if so, traffic will be diverted along Clovelly Road, Commercial Road and Sutton Road. On Monday 10 May Elliott Road Bridge will be closed to traffic and a signed diversion route will take vehicles from one side of Gdynia Way to the other via Cattedown Road. The bridge will remain open to pedestrians and cyclists. Other enabling works will include alterations to the kerb alignment on Embankment Road outside Prince Rock Primary School to allow a temporary two-way traffic system to operate during the temporary closure of Gdynia Way from June. This work will be carried out under single lane closures and is not expected to cause any major disruption to traffic flow. Source: Plymouth City Council

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