PUBLIC consultation is set to start on a proposed new £19.3m bridge crossing the River the Mersey at Warrington aimed at relieving traffic congestion at Bridgefoot.
Warrington Borough Council’s Executive Board last night considered and ratified a report on plans to construct the new bridge highway improvement scheme and proposed traffic re-routing that will connect Chester Road to Centre Park.
The report requested formal permission to commence public consultation on the Centre Park Link scheme. Consultation will now start later this month and run through to December.
The project, part funded and enabled by Local Growth Funding, awarded via the Cheshire and Warrington Local Enterprise Partnership, aims to assist and improve traffic flow around Warrington, facilitate the construction of in excess of 500 new homes and further improve access to Centre Park.
Subject to a robust public consultation exercise and subsequent planning approval the project could commence in 2016 and be complete and operational in 2018.
The plan is to build a bridge that will span the River Mersey from the A5060 Chester Road to the north of Gainsborough Road across to the southern end of Centre Park.
Slutchers Lane will also be improved and integrated into the highway system which, along with complementary improvements to traffic routing in the town centre, will maximise the benefits of the scheme by removing as much traffic as possible from the heavily congested Bridgefoot Gyratory and Brian Bevan Island roundabout.
In July 2014 the Cheshire and Warrington Growth Deal was announced and confirmed an indicative allocation of £5.3million towards the cost of the scheme. The remaining funding will be provided from Warrington Borough Council’s capital programme and Developer funding.
It is proposed to engage Balfour Beatty through the national Scape Civils Framework to develop and deliver the scheme.
Councillor Hans Mundry, Executive Board Member, Highways, Transportation, and Public Realm, said: “This is an exciting and transformational scheme that will promote and support Warrington Borough Council’s ambitious growth framework, Warrington Means Business. It will create jobs during construction, allow the building of new homes and the benefits that that will bring and, importantly help keep our traffic on the move.”
4 Comments
If the project has been confirmed to the extent “Balfour Beatty through the national Scape Civils Framework will develop and deliver the scheme” what contribution will a public consultation make to what is eventually built?
all this will do is move the bottleneck further down to bank quay station , I can see 19 million wasted here in this day and age 19 million is chicken feed some bridge this is going to be lol It might be the builders who re built Walton bridge after the lorry hit it !!!! its in their budget after greasing a few sweaty council hands
Don’t know about sweaty palms, but Stephen Bate is quite right when he says this bridge will do little to ease Warrington’s long running traffic problems. It is yet another example of the yet another council’s failure to tackle our abysmal infrastructure inadequacies which have been staring them in the face for decades, whilst instead pushing ahead with developments that increasingly make matters worse.
Surely this bridge is being built for access to the 650 homes they are pkanning once the bridge is in place!