Supermarket bosses today unveiled a plan to ease congestion at one of Telford’s notorious bottlenecks.A road cutting through the heart of Telford’s Wrekin Retail Park could be widened to try to put a stop to vehicles clogging up nearby routes.
Mini-roundabouts would also be removed and filter lanes added to help vehicles get around.
Managers at the Tesco Extra store are drawing up the proposals to make changes to the access road to ease the gridlock. Today and yesterday staff from parking firm Euro Car Parks were at the site to direct vehicles in a bid to keep traffic flowing.
Tens of thousand of vehicles visit the retail park every week. At peak shopping times traffic can back up through the site and up the dual carriageway to the nearby M54 island.
Supermarket manager Jim Bradford said: “At the moment we have got plans for widening of the access roads up to Tesco, which actually takes away the mini-roundabouts and puts in some filter lanes.”
He said the filter lanes would enable traffic to turn right to access stores such as Homebase and Matalan without causing delays to vehicles travelling right up to Tesco.
Mr Bradford said: “There is just congestion getting in and out at peak times, when there is a busy event like Christmas. I believe in the past cars have been queued up to the M54.”
He said he was excited about the plans and that all parties involved were in agreement about them.
Mr Bradford said the store was extremely busy today but traffic appeared to be flowing with the help of the attendants.
Tesco spokesman Neil Skitt said they would be submitting a planning application “fairly soon”.
He said: “We are working with the retail park owners on a scheme. We have worked with the council and consulted with them and now it is a matter of submitting an application.”
He said they could not predict the outcome of the application, but hoped it would be positive.
If planning permission is granted, work would take between eight and 12 weeks.
In 2006 Tesco, which has about 40,000 customers a week, applied for permission to create a separate access for its customers only or to build an entrance and exit direct from the M54, but these did not go ahead.
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