Road Works to Make Roads Work

Mayor Dave Hodgson writes about the upcoming road works:

I know very well what a big impact traffic congestion can have for people, with huge knock-on effects for their personal and working lives. That's why we're delivering the biggest ever investment in our roads to ease congestion at hotspots around Bedford including Cow Bridge and Ampthill Road on the south side of town and Clapham Road/A6/Manton Lane to the north.

The grant money we won for the Transporting Bedford 2020 project has to be spent by April 2021, and with numerous major works taking place to get traffic moving, we have to crack on with them. The next works beginning under this programme are at Britannia Road, by the hospital, and you can read more about that scheme here.

Those works will inevitably cause disruption, and another set of works to do that will be Network Rail's closure of Bromham Road Bridge from June 24th until Spring 2020. What is especially hard to take about these works is that we are due to get a downgraded rail service after they're finished due to decisions by the government.

Details of Network Rail's works can be found here.

One silver lining is that we have won their agreement to enable us to build a much-needed cycle and foot bridge alongside the road bridge after it's completed. They will also have a temporary cycle and foot bridge in place during the works.

We'll be monitoring the works closely and ensuring Network Rail does everything it can to minimise disruption and inconvenience, while taking any action we can in terms of easing traffic around town.

Best wishes

Dave