A SENIOR Warrington councillor is calling on local residents and organisations to make their views known about the controversial Mersey Ports Master Plan.
Cllr Celia Jordan, (pictured) a member of Warrington Borough Council and chairman of Stockton Heath Parish Council, says the proposals – which would involve a four-fold increase in the number of ships using the Manchester Ship Canal – do little to inspire confidence.
She said: “The Mersey Ports Master Plan will bring huge benefits to the region.
“However, it is not clear whether Warrington will benefit to the same extent.”
Cllr Jordan said when the three swing bridges in the Warrington area, on the A49, A50 and A56, are swung, it results in massive traffic congestion.
Traffic experts estimate it takes an hour for traffic in the town to return to normal.
At present, the bridges close to road traffic on an average of 527 occasions a year – or 1.5 per day.
This would mean the bridges would each be “off” six times a day – and records show that peak canal traffic is in the middle of the working day and not coinciding with tides as the canal company has always claimed.
Cllr Jordan said the master plan consultation document makes no mention of how emergency vehicles will cope when the bridges are “off.”
Nor does it put forward any suggestions for how Warrington’s roads would cope when they are affected by M6 closures, nor consider extra traffic likely to arrive in the borough to avoid tolls on the new Runcorn bridge.
Cllr Jordan said one solution could be a holding area on the canal – possibly at the proposed Port Warrington at Moore – where vessels to be held until peak road traffic periods had ended.
Parish councils in the areas likely to be affected are sending a joint response to the canal company’s public consultation.
She added: “It would be helpful if people and organisations also responded so that a real cross-section of opinion can be considered.”
The address for comments is: Mersey Ports Master Plan Consultation, Maritime Centre, Port of Liverpool, L12 1LA or email [email protected] by September 5.
Speak out on canal expansion plan
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Gary Skentelbery
Experienced journalist for more than 40 years. Managing Director of magazine publishing group with three in-house titles and on-line daily newspaper for Warrington. Experienced writer, photographer, PR consultant and media expert having written for local, regional and national newspapers. Specialties: PR, media, social networking, photographer, networking, advertising, sales, media crisis management. Chair of Warrington Healthwatch Director Warrington Chamber of Commerce Patron Tim Parry Johnathan Ball Foundation for Peace. Trustee Warrington Disability Partnership. Former Chairman of Warrington Town FC.
6 Comments
Yes, Mrs Jordan, but willthe council listen? They are not listening re Peel Hall so why would we expect them to listen re the canal expansion.
Please feel free to try to convince me.
Why, oh why, won’t people read articles properly? Mrs Jordan is not asking people to write to the council, she is asking them to write to Peel Ports. This consultation has got nothing to do with the council (or Peel Hall!)
In all fairness, I read it exactly the same way. Perhaps you need to dumb it down a bit more for us peasants. And speaking of which, I thought the councillors represented the people’s views on issues like this so how come the councillor is telling the public to go and deal with it themselves? I know Geoff Settle also made his views on the issue very clear so there wouldn’t be much point in taking objections to him either. Seems to me that if local councillors are all in favour of allowing Peel to carry out their plans and the public can’t even understand where to send their objections then we may as well all just sit back and not bother.
“Traffic experts estimate it takes an hour for traffic in the town to return to normal.”
Traffic experts in Warrington? Oxymoron?
I’ve only got access to my blackberry at the moment so pls excuse any miss types. I think that I started a thread on the discussion forum with links to the Peel Holings web site. There you will find details of the proposals and how to submit your comments. My concerns remain the opporational practicalities, swing bridge movements and impact on the eco-system, in other ways it has positive benefits. I would like to see an idependent analysisstudy on the overall impact. This has not yet been done.
NIMBY springs to mind. Are the Council already having meetings with Peel Holdings on this topic. If yes, why have we not yet been informed. The Officers of WBC seem to have very cosy relationships with prospective developers without wishing to listen to and understand any objections. It is about time that these very well paid Officers and “elected” Councillors in what we thought was a democracy started to listen to the residents and acted accordingly.