One of Arbroath’s busiest bottlenecks could be tackled in a near-£1/4 million improvement programme.
Following a traffic survey of the Westway junction with the A92, Angus Council roads bosses have come up with a plan to widen approaches to the mini-roundabout and put a new pedestrian crossing in place serving the retail park.
Councillors face a decision over whether to use almost all of the cash-strapped authority’s pot for a single scheme against competing priorities across the district.
Communities committee members will be presented with the findings of a traffic assessment carried out by specialists at the junction, which delivered forecasts of 50-vehicle queues when new town housing is built.
Council head of technical and property services Ian Cochrane said: “Results from the traffic modelling indicated that the junction is already under pressure during peak hours and the addition of committed development will further exacerbate this.
“Vehicles on the west approach were observed as treating it as a single-lane approach, despite it being marked as a two-lane approach over a distance of 25 metres, allowing for at least four cars to queue side by side.
“There are various options for improvement, however the preferred option is to widen the A92 Dundee Road carriageway to the south to provide an additional lane on the west approach to the mini-roundabout and to widen the approach to the mini-roundabout.”
The preferred option for the Westway/retail park junction is to put Toucan crossings in place on the north and west approaches, which experts say will have a beneficial knock-on of increasing traffic capacity around the junction.
Total costs are estimated at £239,000, but the report to councillors warns that there is no funding in the council’s budget for the project.
“The 2018/23 financial plan includes £200,000 in 2018/19 for traffic calming/road safety and £50,000 for traffic signals/pedestrian facilities and it is considered that these budgets should be used to progress the proposals.
“Given these budgets are reduced from previous years, have existing commitments and the impact of taking nearly 95% of the funding for one project against other competing priorities, it is proposed that these works are planned to span two financial years 2018/19 and 2019/20 to mitigate the impact on these limited budgets.”
