SIR: Your headlines and Opinion column on March 2 referred to the various roadworks underway around the town and the inconvenience they are causing to road users. I can understand and sympathise with the frustration all of this work is causing, but I think your opinion writer must have had his tongue in his cheek when he suggested that "those in power" are somehow not exposed to such problems themselves. Council officers and members are, of course, no different to other local people in travelling on Bolton's roads.

So why do we have the current problems?

The European Community is soon to allow heavier lorries on our roads. The previous Government allocated money to local authorities to upgrade their bridges so that they can carry 40 tonne vehicles from January 1999. This national programme of bridge reconstruction has been ongoing in Bolton since 1987 and the works on St Peter's Way are required to complete this major reconstruction programme. (Incidentally, protracted negotiations with Railtrack about their bridges is likely to leave the Council with little option but to place weight limits on some of their bridges as reassessment of their strength continues).

? The works on St Peter's Way could have been organised as three separate jobs for the three bridges affected (Church Road, Cemetery Road and Darley Park) but, in order to reduce the overall disturbance to the public, it has been organised in a single contract and a significant amount of maintenance work (not least to crash barriers) will also be undertaken during the time allocated for the bridge works.

While the Council regrets the delays that are caused by roadworks generally, it is not the intention of the Council to target any specific route, indeed it would be extremely unlucky for all the roadworks underway at any one time to be the cause of delay to one single journey; most people are likely to come across only one set of roadworks on their journey.

Many of the roadworks in the town are developer's schemes or statutory undertaker's work over which the Council has no locational control and sometimes limited control over time scales.

?Ray Jefferson

Director of Environment

Bolton Metro?

Converted for the new archive on 14 July 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.