Last week I wrote to Hertfordshire County Council and Affinity Water after being informed of plans to close Redbourn Road (A5183) between Redbourn and St. Albans. These plans and are causing significant disruption in Redbourn, Harpenden and St. Albans, including with school drop-offs and people trying to get to work.
You can see a full explanation from Hertfordshire County Council below.
“The works are for main water replacement, the works will be undertaken by Affinity Water and are currently scheduled to take place between 13 September and 21 November 2021.
The south eastbound closure of A5183 Redbourn Road is to provide a safe working environment for the workforce and public alike. Equally, this will provide a safe area for the distribution of materials and construction works required, in order for the installation to be completed.
Installing the pipeline on the other side of the road (St. Albans to Redbourn Road) would mean closing the only footway available to pedestrians at this location, it would also result in teams digging within close proximity to high pressure gas main. Keeping the footway open supports the need of vulnerable road users such as pedestrians, as set out in Hertfordshire's Local Transport Plan (LTP4).
In addition to this, a full road closure would be required to incorporate a walkway in the road to safely guide pedestrians around the works, with traffic not being able to use Redbourn Road at all. HCC and Affinity Water agreed that this would not be ideal from a network management, health and safety and construction standpoint. The one-way closure was agreed to keep traffic flowing as opposed to installing a full road closure, thus diverting traffic from all directions.
Traffic signals were considered, however we anticipated that this would numerous problems particularly given the extent of the works. The length of pipework required for this scheme is to be welded up to 200m in sections, this methodology has been chosen to reduce the length of time the traffic management is in place on Redbourn Road. By reverting to traffic lights, the length of site would need to be reduced, thereby increasing the overall duration by approximately 6 weeks. The traffic signals would require significant green time to clear traffic in both directions to accommodate cyclists. This would increase network disruption and potentially lead to motorists skipping the red lights causing more issues, as experienced on other schemes previously.
Hertfordshire County Council and Affinity Water discussed the possibility of maintaining access for the bus services, unfortunately this option was not viable due to the large excavations, plant and materials within the extent of the closure. If the gatemen were unable to attend site at 7:40am to stop traffic and let the buses through, the bus would become stuck and unable to turn back around. We also wanted to avoid any possibility of a bus service driving down the wrong side of the road towards oncoming traffic, therefore, the 34 service from Centrebus will be diverting using the planned diversion. Please note that the closure will not be set up until after 9.30am on the first day.
We look to reduce the economic impact of roadworks on the greater area as much as possible and agreed to extended working hours, including weekend working in order to do this. The A5183 Redbourn Road is a traffic sensitive route and we have looked to deliver works outside of the traffic sensitive times of the route as a whole to minimise the duration. Whilst the works will cause inconvenience to the members of the public, they are essential.
I appreciate this may not be the answer that you would have wanted to see, however we are looking to minimise the overall impact that these works have on the residents, travelling public and the wider economy of St. Albans.”
I continue to liaise with Hertfordshire County Council and Affinity Water to try to find solutions to the problems constituents are having as a result of this road closure and am working to ensure that these works go as quickly as possible. There has been an appreciation that more notice needed to be given to residents and I hope that that will be the case for future works. HCC and Affinity have committed to me that they will continue to review the Traffic Management Plan over the coming weeks.