Shropshire Trunk Roads need improvement Government Minister told.
They are two nationally and even internationally important arterial routes but through Shropshire the A5 and A483 are woefully inadequate to deal with the thousands of vehicles that uses them every day.
That is the view of those who live alongside the trunk roads, those who have to use them for work and play and those whose businesses depend on them.
Yesterday Government minister, John Hayes, saw and heard for himself the problems in a day long visit to the county.
The roads minister was driven from Birmingham accompanied by north Shropshire MP, Owen Paterson who has campaigned for more than 20 years for improvements to the A5.
The A5 is part of the Trans-European Highway, linking mainland Europe with Britain and onto Ireland. The route, from Felixstowe and Dover travels north through England, crosses the Welsh border to reach Holyhead and Ireland.
It is completely motorway and dual carriageway, save for a 20 mile stretch from just north of Shrewsbury to just inside the Welsh border at Ruabon.
Here, apart from the Nesscliffe bypass, the traffic is funnelled into a single carriageway country trunk road with busy road junctions including the notorious Shotatton crossroads and the Oswestry and Chirk bypass roundabouts where hold-ups are becoming the norm. Traffic also has to cross two high road bridges over the rivers Ceiriog and Dee.
More than 18,000 vehicles a day use the A5 between Shrewsbury and Oswestry, seven per cent of them lorries. The figures jump to almost 24,000 on the Oswestry bypass, where almost 10 per cent is heavy goods traffic. Slow moving agricultural vehicles add to the problems.
There has been a 33 per cent growth in traffic in the past 25 years.
Mr Paterson said that since the early 1990s about 50 people had died from road accidents on the single carriageway A5.
"There have also been countless accidents where people have suffered injury. The cost of these accidents is extremely high both in terms of human tragedy and economic cost," he said.
At Oswestry the A5 joins with the A483 which in itself is a major arterial route connecting the north and south Wales.
The Welsh Assembly has carried out improvements to the A483 in Wales but there has been little work on the stretch through Shropshire.
Businessmen told the roads minister that both trunk roads were vital routes into Wales, whether for holidaymakers or for commercial operators.
Mr Paterson said: "The west and Wales have huge opportunities to flourish and these are arterial routes into Wales. Shropshire is well placed to benefit but we need the infrastructure of a good road network.”
In meetings just off the Oswestry bypass and in the village of Pant, Mr Hayes heard from local people of these experiences of the local road network.
Villagers in Pant and Llanymynech have been campaigning for three decades for an A483 bypass and have since seen neighbouring Four Crosses win its bypass because it is across the border in Wales with the work funded by the Welsh Assembly. Ten years ago it was scheduled in the Government road programme, which then ran out of money.
Parish Councillor, Dilys Gaskill said: "The road gets more dangerous year on year. We desperately need a bypass for our residents."
