Delayed bridge repairs to start next week
Safety barriers are to be replaced on a road bridge, seven months after they were damaged in a crash.
Temporary barriers and a speed limit have been in place on the A483/A5 Chirk bypass since a crash in June last year when a car came perilously close to plunging hundreds of feet off the bridge into the River Ceiriog below. A woman was injured in the collision between the car and a lorry.
Specialist highway contractors struggled to source replacement barriers because stockpiles had been pressed into use in London terror attacks in the summer.
Work will start on to replace the barriers on the busy trunk road between the Gledrid and Halton roundabouts on Monday and will last until March 21.
The roadworks will see the safety barriers upgraded to bring them up to scratch with the latest standards and aim to make the road safer.
Contractor, the North and Mid Wales Trunk Road Agent, said the width of the road will be narrowed during the works and there will be a 40 mile an hour speed limit.
There will also be three overnight road closures with traffic diverted through the town of Chirk.
These will be from 8pm until 6am on January 28, February 18 and March 20.
Any abnormal loads will be escorted across the bridge which the agent said may cause minor delays.
The bypass is a bottleneck on the A483, one of the main, north south arterial roads through Wales.
Last week Welsh Assembly Highways minister, Ken Skates, pledge to look at improvements to the road and said work on the Halton roundabout should get underway next year to ease congestion.
The road is also part of the trans-European highway connecting the ferry ports on the south coast with Holyhead and Dublin. It carries one of the largest volumes of freight traffic of any road in Wales.
The Shropshire Star's Dual-It campaign is calling for the section of road from north of Shrewsbury to the Gledrid roundabout to be turned into a dual carriageway.
Anyone wanting to sign our petition can do so online at change.org/p/roads-minister-john-hayes-make-the-a5-a-dual-carriageway-between-shrewsbury-and-chirk
The petition is also in the Guildhall in Oswestry, the home of Oswestry Town Council.
