Queues stretching back miles, resulting in delays in excess of an hour, are causing misery for those travelling to and from Cowes today (Saturday).
It is chaos on the roads between Newport and Cowes as a result of the full, weekend-long closure of Horsebridge Hill, as part of the ongoing works to widen the road for the Three Oaks housing development.
The closure came into force at 20:00 last night, as previously reported by Island Echo.
All traffic is having to divert via Vittlefields and Thorness in both directions.
4-way temporary traffic lights erected at the junction of Forest Road and Whitehouse Road are being blamed for the excessive delays by motorists, who say that the lights are causing more problems than solutions.
Motorists should avoid travelling to or from Cowes.
The developers of the new build houses for which this work is being done should be made to pay compensation to the buisinesses who are suffering through all this. I don’t see why they should prifit whilst causing so much inconvenience and loss to the rest of us. Perhaps then they won’t be so keen to destroy our beautiful Island with all their ticky tacky houses.
Unfortunately that is life, Governments want new homes
built and that is what they are doing, building new homes.
Island Roads and some of the council don’t have any thought. What happens if people die because all emergency vehicles are detoured.
Do you really think they didn’t think about it? I mean the amount that someone in cojncil got paid off to approve the dumbest idea and road plan must have taken some real thought as cash going to someone’s account.
They didn’t care when on the mainland protests were delaying
ambulances getting to hospitals.
Surely Island Roads would have the sense to put traffic lights either side on
Forest rd of Betty Haunt lane and Whitehouse rd to manage the traffic ..in fact they should have been in place through out the road works
Traffic control like most things on the island
are poor.
It would be easy to have lights placed to make
things easier.
Sod all new then, no one can work out the work could have been done at night to avoid all this chaos, but none of them cares a rats eh?
They probably didn’t want to pay overtime rates
for nightwork.
‘Motorists should avoid travelling to or from Cowes’!
Who on earth came up THAT USELESS piece of advice!
What are people who live in/work in Cowes or elsewhere supposed to do?
We cannot all sit on our Ivory Towers like the Councillors or the so-called ‘Management’ at Island Roads. Some people do actually have to go to work for a living!!!
Driving around or queuing around the last two weeks I have been depressed that the road system is being closed down without strategic over view,the majority of these closures and diversions could have beern accomplished in the autumn when the traffic would have been consistently lower.
The 4 way lights are a joke. Why not just have 2 way lights like any other junction or crossroads. Whoever came up with that idea is a complete idiot!!!
Could be much worse, imagine if IW Council were not so
kind, one might have to pay congestion and ULEZ
charges and islandwide parking permit charges.
What idiot decided on drivers nightmare, FOUR WAY LIGHTS. Obviously Island roads and certain councillors who live Sandown way
I remember when a lady unfortunately was killed at the junction, and everyone was demanding traffic lights be installed. Now there are temporary ones in use at said location, guess what, everyone wants them removed
Makes you think what will happen when the same road gets closed for 16 to 18 weeks in the new year. Personally, I think they floating bridge should be free, and the money lost, the council should charge the building company, that way they’d stick to their deadline and not overrun.
That’s my view and should have been in place from the start