Hertford town centre is facing up to 17 weeks of serious disruption as work starts to ease traffic flows and improve access to the bus station.

The work involves the introduction of traffic lights at the Bluecoats Roundabout and at the junction of Mill Road and Ware Road, adjacent to the Tesco supermarket. Programming of the traffic lights will give a greater priority [than at present] to traffic, especially buses, joining the A414 from the Ware Road. The current configuration of the Bluecoats Roundabout allows traffic on the A414 and Relief Road to dominate, causing long tailbacks along the Ware Road. This in turn causes congestion in Mill Road during the rush-hour.

In preparation, resurfacing is taking place in Railway Street, which will take the bulk of diverted traffic that normally uses the eastbound exit from the Bluecoats roundabout to Ware.

Work will also take place to improve access to the bus station.

Railway Street has recently seen hold-ups due to traffic controls imposed during the replacement of a gas main.

For more information about last year's proposals for Ware Road click here.

Background

Traffic Management in Hertford has always been a controversial issue. This is partly due to the fact that the A414, which runs through the town, forms part of an outer alternative to the M25 London Orbital Motorway. Whenever the M25 is blocked at its' Northern edge, the volume of traffic passing though the town increases dramatically leading to long delays. The releif road, which was controversially driven through the centre of the town in the sixties, forms part of this route and is where most of the delays occur, leading to vehicles using the town centre as a bypass to the bypass! Studies show that more than half the traffic using the town is simply passing through and initiatives have been suggested as to how to deal with this, although an outer bypass has been rejected by both residents and the local authority on ecological grounds.