Contractors block Mill Road and set up diversion (12th August 2009)
Sent to us by a supporter. Some quotations from the e-mail we received from this supporter are underneath.
Some quotations from the e-mail we received from this supporter:
“I was cycling along Mill Road towards town at around 6:40am this morning when I found the road blocked at the junction with Hope Street. The attached pictures are of poor quality, but there are a few that will give you an idea of what was going on. One of the men confirmed they were Tesco contractors.
They had two large lorries pulled up on the road so they could unload to the front of the store. They were parked on one carriageway and were using a kind of mini forklift truck to unload from the side of the vehicles into the other carriageway, thereby blocking the whole road. They had a blue diversion sign encouraging people to divert down Hope Street. Many, but not all did. When people insisted on passing they waved them through, but unfortunately those doing the waving did not have a co-ordinated approach to this, so they ended up with a bus and van head-on that would have crashed if the van driver had not realised what was happening. Most cyclists simply rode on the pavement. Just as I left a police car came past also travelling towards town. Miraculously the diversion sign seemed to have vanished, I’m not sure if the police car stopped as this happened just as I was cycling away, needless to say down Hope Street.”
“Are the residents of Hope Street etc happy that drivers are being told to use their roads as a rat run?”
“Was the contractor authorised by the County Council to effectively close the road and use signage and stewards to divert traffic in this way?”
“Were the contractor’s employees suitably qualified to set up this diversion?”
