Pete Taylor sent us these photos of the A555 westbound taken this morning (Thursday, 15th February).
The road is currently closed for 17 weeks so essential maintenance works can to be carried out to repair problems with the highway drainage that is causing a depression to form within the carriageway.
Pete said "The only guys working on this little job are those you can see!"
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Comments
Here's what readers have had to say so far. Why not add your thoughts below.
A) plenty of time on their hands for numerous tea-breaks etc OR
B) Expect protracted time overrun with the "desirous" traffic clogging.
I can assure you there was a team of 6/7+1(supervisor?) all togged up in hi-viz orange, hard hats/ear defenders and safety specs. PLUS, a welder (at that distance, dressed in what looked like a country jacket and cord trousers...!) at that very spot around 10:30 am today - only the welder appeared to be doing anything resembling 'work'!! Sorry guys, maybe it was just a bad time.
Yet this afternoon a copy of the latest Manchester Weekly News - Wilmslow Edition (dated Thursday 22nd February (so that's 'tomorrows' edition??) popped through the letterbox announcing yet another/further 3 months delay until, wait for it, now LATE SUMMER. These major contractors and corporate/corporation customers seem to have lost 6 months MORE in just two weeks (two tranches of 3 months) - what kind of overpaid idiots are these people - not quite stupid enough since they continue to feed we citizens who pay their inflated salaries - utter garbage.
That's a very generous comment Bob, and you are right to point out most contributors sound/read like a load of whinging bystanders with nothing better to do!
On the other hand, maybe you should wake up and smell the coffee!
This 'local' major roadworks project of approximately 6 miles dual carriagway, junctions etc. (plus the many and various other minor upheavals) affecting many, many 10's of thousands of people - in order to eventually make their lives better!
Being realistic, the highly paid professionals in charge of these projects and their co-workers cannot cover all the bases - there will be glitches along the way - but it's fair to state that a 'concept to working reality' scheme covering at the very least 15 years (with about 10 core years of detailed planning and actual digging stuff out and laying stuff down) - should manage to plan for 95% of everything short of earthquakes and nuclear conflageration.
As we stand today and going back to initial groundbreaking, the present itteration of SEMMMS is about 3/3.5 years (and please remember, around a couple of miles of operational road and 2.5 major bridgeworks in the Handforth/Woodford area was commissioned 20 years back!!).
I'll be generous and more even handed
- it's much more difficult working around/with existing infrastructure than say, just an otherwise virgin landscape or expanse of farmland, woodlands etc.
- it can be challenging working to an outline brief/central financing that is on/it's off/on again/off, no on etc. with a constantly changing and disappearing target date that defeats even the most optimistic trailblazers amongst us.
There must be examples of similar projects that have been well managed, that come in on/under schedule and on/under budget (perhaps unfair but you can find well managed examples not too far away in places like Germany, Sweden, Switzerland) - this ain't one of them!!
Repeat, we've apparently now lost another six months on the completion date in two, 3 month lumps in JUST TWO WEEKS of February.
So, if you don't mind - horse manure, it is a mismanaged, financially overblown, under resourced, ill lead shambles run by fantacists who take all of us for granted - we deserve and should expect better.