With the long awaited Alderley Edge and Nether Alderley bypass now open, many local residents are eagerly waiting to see exactly what effect it will have on traffic flow through our village. It was certainly a lot quieter when I walked my daughters to school this morning.
One area which is causing particular concern amongst some of our readers though is Monks Heath, where road works will continue until Christmas and a new set of traffic lights is being introduced at the Bollington Lane/A34 junction.
In response to requests from our readers we have obtained the above diagrams from Birse Civils, showing the final road layout in this area, and confirmation from Cheshire East of exactly what changes are being made at the junction.
Andy Buckley, Programme Delivery Manager, told us "The works at Monks Heath cross roads are not extensive but certainly have a large impact on the vehicles that currently use the junction. The works are simply to widen the A34 south bound approach going from Alderley to provide an extra lane for traffic turning left towards Macclesfield. There are other associated works to accommodate this, such as the re-positioning of some signals, but there are no other widening works at this junction.
"At Bollington Lane we are constructing new junction layouts that will be signal controlled to accommodate the increased traffic flows that are predicted to use this route rather than going through the actual Monks Heath cross roads junction. The previous junction between the A34 and Bollington Lane was the scene for several accidents the occurrence of which once the new junction is in place should be reduced.
"I can understand the comments about how close together on the A34 the new lights at Bollington Lane will be to the Monks Heath cross roads lights. We have investigated linking these sets together so they would be managed as one unit, unfortunately they are too far apart to enable that to be done. The same study also showed that the two operation of the two independent sets should not interfere with the operation of the other, this is something we will monitor once they are up and running."
Andy added "Altogether these improvements will improve the capacity for traffic to negotiate this area more successfully."
Several of our readers have expressed concerns that two sets of traffic lights so close together will cause traffic chaos and simply move the bottleneck from Alderley Edge to Monks Heath.
We travelled along the new bypass about 4pm on Friday and, as many of our readers predicted, the traffic was queued quite far back at the south end of the bypass and gridlocked all the way to Monks Heath crossroads - granted it was rush hour on a Friday.
We will have to wait until the Monks Heath works are finished towards the end of the year though to really see what impact the bypass and these works will have on traffic flow in that area.
You can also download a PDF file illustrating all of the changes at Monks Heath together or scroll through the different diagrams at the top of the page by clicking on 'next photo' or playing the slideshow.
