A new set of temporary traffic lights has sprung up near the end of Sunderland Road, as well as the set on the end of Westbourne Drive.
Perry Vale is quiet now, but will probably be badly queuing later like yesterday.
Westbourne Drive lights were removed yesterday, but it looks like the other set will be with us for the weekend as no work going on the road there.
Siddons Road also closed and impassible at present.
Today a new set of lights was installed just down from Sunderland Road, so we are back to two sets of temporary lights.
These look not to be sequenced together and are sufficiently close that it’s easily gridlocked by selfish drivers.
Siddons Road is still closed too.
What are they doing there?
So amazingly the lights at the end of Westbourne Drive are still there, and somewhat more annoyingly bus stop ‘U’ is still out of action.
More works have cropped up at the end of Siddons Road, on Perry Vale causing a narrowing but not too much traffic.
And more lights and excavations just started on Perry Vale at the bottom of Wynell Road too.
All in all, these robots don’t seem that fast, but the disruption isn’t so bad and much better than digging up the whole road I would guess.
Does anyone know what they are doing? They’ve been working on side roads off Mayow Road as well.
I think they are using little robots inside the gas main to inspect and repair the pipes, but without having to excavate and replace the pipework directly. The work sites are the entry points for the robot I guess.
ULC seem to be the main company involved, working for SGN. There also appears to be a directional drilling company involved, but I don’t know how that is being used.
I think sometimes they put new plastic pipes inside old iron pipes.
The road works permit states this from SGN:
“Carry out mains inspection via camera survey then internally seal 24” joints using CISBOT robotics."
Says it all really - they could be peeking right up your pipes missus.
And finally it looks like the last set of temporary traffic lights down at the Sainsbury’s end have gone…
Those robot gas main repairs took some time to complete, but it didn’t cause too much disruption overall, certainly compared to digging everything up!
