Essential works Norfolk Bridge Roundabout causing congestion
West Sussex County Council is aware of traffic congestion due to the ongoing works at Norfolk Bridge Roundabout in Shoreham and apologise for the inconvenience being caused during these essential works to improve the electricity network for the Brighton City Airport (BCA) development.
They would like to thank people for their patience whilst these works continue as BCA would not be able to operate without them. The Council appreciate people’s frustration and would request they find alternate routes or plan additional time to their journeys until the work is completed.
Traffic levels in Shoreham are typically high and there is never a time when traffic flows are significantly lighter than normal which means any restriction on the capacity of the roads will cause congestion. WSCC is not able to refuse the works currently being promoted by UK Power Distribution Ltd (UKPD) with our role being to try and minimise the disruption these works will inevitably cause.
In this instance UK Power Distribution (UKPD) initially suggested that these works would take place over three weeks using multiway traffic signals. This would have meant 3 weeks of the sort of disruption seen this week. The Council amended UKPD’s approach to only one week of working with traffic lights (this week) and then subsequently working under lane closures for a further two weeks to reduce the disruptive impact of these works.
Part of this agreement was that UKPD were to manually control the traffic lights at peak times so that signal timings could be adjusted as required to reduce disruption. This means that they could allow for the additional traffic traveling eastbound in the morning peak and westbound traffic in the evening peak. Unfortunately, UKPD did not use manual control as instructed to begin with but are now using all day manual control following WSCC attendance on site.
The traffic lights at the bridge, which are the main cause of the disruption, were removed on 7th October with the remaining works scheduled to be fully complete on 24th October. During this time drivers are asked to avoid the area if at all possible.
