A £17.9M upgrade of a congested ring road in Walsall, the West Midlands, can get under way this summer after the council’s wait for funding ended last week.
Walsall planned to start work on the scheme last summer, but the Department of Transport stalled over releasing the cash, the metropolitan borough council claimed. The scheme was provisionally accepted for £12.1M of funding some years ago.
The statutory processes were completed in October 2004, when the compulsory purchase orders and side road orders were confirmed. Walsall said that, now the DfT had agreed to increase its contribution to £16.6M towards the £17.9M cost, the scheme was set to make life safer for pedestrians, bus passengers and cyclists by encouraging drivers off rat runs and on to the new road. Seven out of eight of the 1950 ring road’s main junctions will be upgraded to increase capacity for through-traffic, while limiting access to the town centre to buses, taxis, delivery vehicles and for access.
A number of new signal-controlled pedestrian crossings will be incorporated, for example, on all four arms of the Pleck Road/Bridgeman Street junction in order to improve access to an adjacent hospital. A new, segregated cycleway and footway will also run alongside the Manor Hospital and the Arboretum.
The council is currently finalising the contract for the work, and could not say which firm would be carrying out the work. Where possible, sections of new carriageway will be built off-line from existing traffic in order to minimise disruption. Transport minister ~Derek Twigg~ said it was ‘an important scheme’ that would reduce town centre traffic, noise and pollution.
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