Motorists on the Isle of Wight are continuing to be made subject to long delays due to chaos with the Island’s traffic lights, which are being set to timers instead of sensors.
Tailbacks ensued around Wootton last Friday following the resurfacing of Station Road, with traffic backing up around a mile to Fishbourne Lane for much of the day. The disruption led to timetable issues for Southern Vectis and a headache for motorists travelling between Ryde and Newport.
The out-of-the-blue delay left motorists wondering what the hold up was, but for many a similar situation has been experienced for weeks and months on the East side of the Island, with traffic lights at Yarbridge; Morton Common; The Heights; Lake High Street and Hope Road all acting in a similar way.
After being alerted to the nightmare for Island drivers and tourists a like, Island Echo has discovered that when the roads are being resurfaced by Island Roads under the 25-year PFI contract, sensors in the carriageway surface that interact with the traffic lights – known as an induction loop – are being removed and not replaced, meaning the lights cannot tell how much traffic is waiting at the junctions. Instead of detecting traffic flow, the permanent traffic signals are now being switched to timers meaning the traffic is being handled the same at 03:00 in the morning as it is at 17:00 in the afternoon.
At Yarbridge in Brading, Island Echo readers have expressed frustration at how even during the middle of the night the traffic lights go through a full sequence and even allow pedestrians to cross the road when there are no pedestrians in sight, leaving motorists stuck at red lights unnessasarily.
On the other side of Sandown, the junction outside The Heights is said to back up almost to Melville Street regularly during peak periods after Beachfield Road was resurfaced and motorists say the set of lights at Lake High Street are also not behaving as they once did following resurfacing of all junctions there.
As the summer season rapidly approaches, local residents have expressed worry about the traffic lights at Hope Road in Shanklin, which are causing traffic leaving the busy seafront to be backed up and in the middle of the road as they turn right to Lake.
Island Echo has approached Island Roads for a comment (19/06/2015), however at the time of publication a response had not yet been received.
