Closure of St Peter’s Way adds to traffic delays as Birmingham Road work continue
Frustration mounted this week over the impact of the roadworks on Birmingham Road in Stratford as the county council was accused of not doing enough to ease the situation.
The closure of St Peter’s Way, a handy cut-through that links the Birmingham Road to Bishopton Lane was singled out as especially punishing for drivers seeking to avoid the worst of the jams.
John Smyth, 64, who lives in Oakleigh Road, said he can’t understand why the road has been closed to through traffic just because a couple of residents in St Peter’s Way complained.
He told the Herald: “I don’t understand why it has been closed. We all know it’s a snaky road, used as a cut-through – it’s been like that for 17 years.”
Mr Smyth’s daughter, who is 31, recently suffered a stroke after treatment for a brain aneurysm and he regularly drives her to hospital appointments. With their journey now taking much longer, Mr Smyth is frustrated that the personal wishes of those residents in St Peter’s Way are being prioritised over the situation of others.
“Cllr Tim Sinclair said it was for safety and people worried about their pets. But drivers use roads for access, including mine – what about our safety and pets? I have to accept the fact that I don’t own my road and people are entitled to use it. And I resent that the right to use St Peter’s Way is being taken away from us, it is wrong.”
Mr Smyth is a former firefighter and says there is potential impact on emergency services that closing cut-throughs pose. “It is a real concern when you’re on a job that you won’t be able to get through,” he added.
Others have pointed to the nuisance of idling traffic.
Commenting on the Herald letters page this week, Sue Lewis said: “I thought Stratford was meant to be green conscious. All the extra petrol fumes of queuing traffic cannot be good for the environment and the lungs of people walking.
“If anyone breaks down on that road it will be chaos. Surely distributing some of the traffic makes sense?”
Although no actual safety incidents had occurred in St Peter’s Way, a Warwickshire County Council spokesperson explained closing the road was a pre-emptive action.
“From on-site visits and through engagement with residents it was clear that there were near-misses involving vehicles on the carriageway, pedestrians being nearly struck on the footpath and damage caused to parked vehicles,” they said.
“With the situation becoming a matter of safety, the council took the difficult decision to put heavier immovable barriers in at the end of St Peter’s Way, adjoining Birmingham Road, and divert traffic to the signed diversions for the next six weeks, until the closure on the Birmingham Road is scheduled to be lifted.”
Cllr Sinclair (Con, Stratford North) backed the decision.
He said: “I absolutely understand and sympathise with residents who are experiencing the disruption and inconvenience that the temporary closure of St Peter’s Way/Birmingham Road junction is bringing. The decision was taken by the county council officers that safety had to be paramount. St Peter’s Way was never designed to cope with HGVs or buses or the high volume of traffic it was seeing.
“I have been assured that the project team will do everything they can to get the work finished promptly and reopen St Peter’s Way and lift the closure on Birmingham Road to minimise disruption.”
Like many, Mr Smyth said he recognised the need for road and footpath improvements but that he was “struggling to find the method in the madness” over further work planned in the new year that includes switching two-lane traffic out of town to incoming, and how that will ease traffic.
Ms Lewis backed his observation, she said: “The Birmingham Road re-marking will not help congestion as it goes into a single lane further along anyway and very few people dare to risk their lives in a cycle lane. Why was a footpath not put in whilst the houses were being built?”
She added: “Like many others I avoided Stratford altogether on Saturday and went to Warwick to shop and eat instead. The town is in enough trouble after Covid with shops rapidly closing down due to high parking prices and it being cheaper to order from Amazon than to go into town and park.”