Binning relief road 'a missed opportunity', HGV driver says

Kyle Longmuir has to drive across Shrewsbury several times a day to collect goods

After decades of talking about a bypass to complete a ring of A roads around Shrewsbury, the project is over, or "dead in the water", according to Shropshire Council's new leader.

Heather Kidd said the council could not afford to pay for the road after the Labour government insisted that it was not willing to meet a funding shortfall of £156m.

Although the route was far from universally popular, the latest news has been met with disappointment and frustration from some residents, who have said the North West Relief Road (NWRR) was desperately needed to solve some of the town's traffic problems.

• Video: Which way is fastest in our Race Across the Town?

Lorry driver Kyle Longmuir said the bypass would have taken some of the heavy goods vehicles off the existing A roads, which are already too congested.

"It can be quite dangerous and you try not to get frustrated when people overtake you," said Mr Longmuir, from Shawbury.

"When it's busy it's slow and people make silly mistakes when there's more traffic around because people are impatient.

"If we could have a better flow of traffic, then people would make less questionable decisions and we wouldn't have as many accidents."

The North West Relief Road would have been a four-mile-long single carriageway linking west Shrewsbury with the north at Battlefield

Residents living in villages north of Shrewsbury were hoping that the NWRR would have stopped drivers using the area as a cut-through, or "rat run".

Tamarin Bibow, who lives in Ruyton-XI-Towns with her husband and young family, addressed Shropshire councillors last month and asked the new administration to outline plans to tackle the problem.

"We suffer personally, as do may local residents, from serious pollution, both noise and air quality, resulting from traffic forced to come through our village," she said.

"Most of these vehicles use the rat run only because drivers see no practical alternative."

The council said it would continue to assess the weight, width and speed restrictions in the area.

What now for Shrewsbury's traffic woes?

Both Shropshire Council and Shrewsbury's Labour MP Julia Buckley have co-signed a letter to the government to say that the council can no longer afford to build the road, which was estimated earlier this year at £215m.

The council is waiting to find out if it has to pay the government back the £54.4m it was awarded in 2019 to contribute towards the project, then valued at £71m.

More than £20m of the Department for Transport funding has already been spent, largely on design engineer consultancy fees.

Shropshire Council hopes the debt is written off and that it can keep the remaining money to spend on improving congestion elsewhere in the town.

The council's Liberal Democrat leader Heather Kidd said Shrewsbury could not afford to wait years for improvements to get under way.

She said the council was willing to contribute capital funding towards improvements to the existing A roads around the town, which are managed by National Highways.

Councillor Heather Kidd became Shropshire Council leader in May following local elections, which saw the Conservative group removed from power after 16 years

"I have met with National Highways and Midlands Connect because the Dobbies island is a significant problem for the whole area and it stacks up traffic in either direction," she said.

"My concern is that their schemes take a long time to come to fruition, so we need to lobby further and use our MPs to make sure it's speeded up.

"There are things that can be done in the short-term, which will get people on and off that road quicker."

Ms Kidd would also like to see improvements to the roundabout where Welshpool Road joins the A5, to the west of Shrewsbury, and the Battlefield roundabout, which links the A53 with the A49 north of the town.

"We also need to encourage traffic out of the town centre, but until we've done much more around the inner ring-road and A5 and so on, it's going to be difficult," she added.

The leader admitted that there was no quick fix and that significant improvements would take years to happen.

Shrewsbury's MP Julia Buckley opposed the North West Relief Road when she was leader of the Labour group on the council

Shropshire Council is being supported by Shrewsbury's Labour MP, who said she wanted the local authority to keep hold of some of the remaining government grant so it could be reinvested in traffic improvement schemes elsewhere in the town.

Julia Buckley said: "My dream investment with that cash is the roundabout at Battlefield where we've got the enterprise park."

She said the roundabout was too small for the volume of traffic.

"The field next to it is up for sale and I would love to double the size of the roundabout, open up access, and then double the size of the business park," she said.

Wider plans to improve travel and traffic in Shrewsbury have been outlined in the Shrewsbury Moves strategy.

Plans include improvements to park and ride services, public transport and the pedestrianisation of large parts of the town centre.

Under those plans, Shrewsbury would be divided into three "loops" and the road layout would restrict general traffic passing through the town via the Welsh, English and Kingsland bridges or past the railway station.

That would put more traffic on the inner and outer ring roads, but Paul Carvell from the Shrewsbury Business Improvement District said he believed there was enough capacity on those to cope.