Ashburton Guardian, Friday, March 22, 2019

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Friday, Mar 22, 2019

Since Sept 27, 1879

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Lodge a long time coming P3

It is hoped that changes to Ashburton traffic lights at peak flow times will stop scenes such as this. But some councillors have some strong doubts. PHOTO ASHBURTON GUARDIAN

Light changes to gridlock town BY SUE NEWMAN

SUE.N@THEGUARDIAN.CO.NZ

Track debut MOTORING

Traffic could be flowing more smoothly through Ashburton, but cross town motorists might be in for a long wait to cross State Highway One as traffic light timings are changed during peak travel times. When traffic volumes are heavy, traffic lights through Ashburton are now being manually over-ridden from the Christchurch Transport Operations Centre. At those times all State Highway lights will be permanently on green. And that, says Ashburton District Council service delivery committee chairman Stuart Wilson, will effectively

create massive queues on side streets. Rather than fixing the problem it will simply move it to local traffic, he said. Councillors were told by email on Monday that the light phasing trial had already started and would be run for an undisclosed period of time. “They say they’ll control our lights according to queues so they can flush traffic through, Wilson said. It’s an experiment doomed to fail, he believes, with the Walnut Avenue roundabout likely to be a significant hurdle to keeping traffic flowing down the highway. “They’re simply forgetting or ignoring there will be a hold up at Walnut Avenue

and it means people will never be able to get across the main road.” The bottle-necks at town centre traffic lights was likely to mean people would drive to secondary streets and possibly take risks to get onto the highway, he said. “All the talk has been about our traffic being local traffic in terms of our second bridge; this looks like NZTA admitting it’s not all local. The idea is when there are major traffic flows this will come into effect.”

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