New traffic lights on the way for Tewkesbury

Work on a £100,000 scheme to ease congestion at a Tewkesbury bottleneck will start this month.

The county council has announced that it will replace ageing traffic lights at the busy junction of the A438 Ashchurch Road and Shannon Way, close to junction nine of the M5 motorway.

To ensure minimum disruption, the work will start on July 20 when Tewkesbury School has closed for the summer holiday and is scheduled to finish by the time the new term begins at the end of August.

Gloucestershire Highways' project manager Sue Woodward said: "The existing signal equipment is worn out and was likely to become increasingly unreliable.

"We're replacing it with a system that has better signal heads that will be much easier to see.

"It also has a better method of managing traffic because it incorporates improved detection that allows vehicles to flow through the junction more efficiently – though it should also be appreciated that it can't accommodate congestion caused by other features in this area, like queuing from the roundabout.

"The new signals will not only incorporate energy-saving LED technology but will also run on extra low voltage power, so they will be safer to maintain."

Coun Mark Hawthorne, the council's cabinet member for the environment, said: "These signals not only have to handle traffic coming off the M5 but it's also on one of the main routes into Tewkesbury, making it one of the busiest junctions in the county.

"The new system won't solve all the issues associated with it but it will improve the flow of traffic and that has to be good news for everyone who uses it."

Until the new system is in place, traffic using the junction will be controlled by temporary lights, which, in a further attempt to reduce disruption, will be controlled manually during peak hours.

Gloucestershire Highways has written to people who live and work in the area, telling them about the work and when it is due to begin.

The J9 business group in Tewkesbury has been pushing for improvements to be made to the junction.

Hilary Allison, who runs public relations consultancy Vivid at the nearby Basepoint Business Centre, is a member of the group.

She said: "We're very pleased that work is to be done to try to alleviate the congestion. There are times when it's very difficult to get in and out of the business park.

"Time will tell whether this work will make a difference."