TRAFFIC Light Delays At Greenock Roundabout To Last Another Two Months

ROAD users are to face delays at a busy Greenock town centre roundabout for eight weeks longer than expected.

Scottish Water has confirmed that a four-way traffic light system will be in operation at the High Street/Inverkip Street roundabout until 12 October.

Work on a £2.8million project to tackle flooding in and around the Oak Mall Shopping Centre started on 9 July and was originally expected to last four weeks.

The traffic lights are in place while engineers connect new infrastructure to an existing sewer.

Scott Hendry, project manager with contractor amey Black and Veatch said: “In order to minimise disruption for the local community and road users, we had planned to use a guided tunneling machine to tunnel under the roadway and across to the roundabout where the existing sewer is located.

“Early investigations indicated that this less intrusive method of tunnelling would be possible. Unfortunately, that’s not been the case due to the hard, rocky ground conditions we’ve come up against and we now need to dig the 16-metre-long tunnel by hand. This method will take much longer than it would have done with the tunnelling machine.”  

Ruaridh MacGregor, Scottish Water’s corporate affairs manager, said: “Scottish Water is very sorry that we have not been able to lift the road restrictions when we had previously stated and that this complication has increased the project timescales as a result.

“We understand that people will be disappointed with this. However, I would emphasise that this had not been expected and is due to circumstances beyond our control.

“We’d like to thank the local community and all affected road users for their continued patience and understanding. We’d also like to remind the public that local traders and companies remain open for business as usual while the work continues.”