If you’ve been driving around or south of Wokingham Town in the last few weeks, you are more than likely to have seen worse than normal congestion. There have been many different reasons for this and I hope that an explanation will help with understanding, even if it cannot solve every problem.
The South Wokingham Distributor Road (SWDR) has required a number of closures and diversions. It is a 2 year project to connect from Molly Millars through to the Montague Park estate off London Road, to enable the building of around 2,000 houses, part of meeting the government set housing target for our area. The project is being undertaken in phases, to minimise overlapping closures, and it is running to schedule to complete around the end of this year. For those who think this is a party-political issue, it’s worth noting that the new housing and road design were both approved in 2021, before the change of control of the council.
In parallel, utility companies are replacing a lot of old infrastructure. When complete, this will reduce the number of emergency closures. These include Thames Water on Bearwood Road and SGN on Lower Wokingham Road, both of which were delayed to ensure there were viable diversion routes not affected by the SWDR works. Without very good reason, the council cannot indefinitely refuse permission for this work.
And then, there is the unexpected. Last week, SSEN had to put traffic lights onto Finchampstead Road in Wokingham Town whilst they found and fixed 2 serious issues. At the time of writing, SGN are dealing with a gas leak further down Finchampstead Road. At the same time, lanes on the A329M had to close after a crash damaged the central barrier, making the road unsafe. And the diverted traffic was stopped by another crash on Reading Road between Wokingham and Winnersh which closed the road during the morning peak. That’s just a snapshot of one week in one part of the borough. Thankfully, not a typical week, but in the last few months we have also had to deal with the consequences of a collapsing electricity pylon diverting the M4 through Wokingham’s roads for days, an HGV demolishing a bridge parapet in Swallowfield, and many other issues.
At any point in time, there are typically around 150 sets of roadworks underway across the borough, the vast majority of which are utility company works. The more significant closures generally stem from ageing utility infrastructure and new developments to meet government housebuilding targets. The council’s Streetworks team works to coordinate these projects and minimise disruption, but emergency works cannot be delayed. They must respond to issues as they arise, whilst ensuring utility companies complete work as efficiently as possible, within the powers we have. As the lead councillor for this area, I discuss these issues with officers daily and regularly visit sites to check that everything possible is being done to reduce the impact on residents.
New roads, better infrastructure and making it easier to travel by means other than driving will all help mitigate these issues, within our growing borough.
If you want to keep on top of what is happening there is a lot of information available. The One.Network website shows all current and approved future roadworks. You can follow Wokingham Borough Council’s Traffic and Travel Alerts Facebook page and can sign-up for weekly emails from the council on travel issues and read all about how the council manages the road network at Wokingham.gov.uk/roads.
By Cllr Adrian Betteridge
