Chaos in Stafford Street

There were two days of peace along Stafford Street while the electricity people were doing their thing and the A525 was closed. It was even hoped, naively, that some HGV drivers might take the opportunity to find better alternatives to the narrow, winding, bit of road which is demonstrably so unsuitable for these large vehicles. Since the A525 was deprimed, the Highway authorities have failed to complete the change of signing of the road, let alone to take any more positive action to discourage these vehicles, so the only real hope is word of mouth between HGV drivers.

No such luck – towards noon (Wednesday) an articulated transporter going west to east conflicted with several large HGVs going east to west. The result was a snarl-up which took the best part of an hour to resolve, even though there happened to be a couple of police cars (and possibly, we heard, an ambulance) caught up in the jam.

When these problems occur, one is always torn between sympathy for the individual car drivers (and individual HGV drivers for that matter) who are caught up in it, and the hope that a really good hold-up that causes real disruption might eventually lead the authorities to advise the heavy vehicles to avoid Audlem for their own benefit.

(The photograph is, unfortunately, not of the actual incident described, but it does show the general problems that occur).

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