RUSH hour traffic was brought to a near standstill as Stockton Heath swing bridge stuck again, causing traffic chaos in the local area.
Traffic piled up on London Road through the village and over the Cantilever Bridge with long queues also reported on Knutsford Road into the town centre.
As a result the planning meeting taking place at Warrington Parr Hall to discuss controversial proposals to build 770 new homes at Appleton Cross and Grappenhall heyes had to be delayed for 15 minutes, to give members of the public extra time to arrive.
Peel Ports have previously said a routine maintenance and repair programme is in place across all of its sites.
A similar problem occurred in July, last April with another incident in summer 2015.
On each occasion traffic was brought to a near standstill.
Warrington South MP Faisal Rashid has called to have a meeting with Peel Ports to discuss various issues and says he will add the problems with the swing bridge to his list.
The bridge has now re-opened and traffic is flowing as normal.
2 Comments
Never mind painting these bridges – Peel Ports need to be digging in their pockets and ensuring the mechanics of these bridges are working properly – this is happening far too often.
Well said Gary and it’s not like today was really hot so they can’t blame the weather and expansion this time.
The swing bridges have served the area well for well over 100 years without problem and are a superb example of engineering at it best but without maintenance of course they will start to seize and fail.
Here’s hoping they stick completely allowing cars to travel over but stopping the passage of ships…Peels would jump up and sort them out quick enough if it was causing a problem to their freight ships and putting prospective companies off using them and scupper their plans for Port Warrington and their Altlantic/Ocean Gateway etc.
It’s not like Peels are short of money !!!