“Absolute shambles” as traffic lights fail

Questions will be asked once again this morning why Welshpool was left abandoned as the shambolic temporary traffic lights on The Cross were stuck on red all day Sunday.

The lights failed at some point on Saturday night, and it appears that not a single thing was done Sunday to rectify the problem with motorists left to sort out traffic flow themselves.

At one point on Sunday evening, two young children aged around 10 could be seen directing traffic as another member of the public placed black bin liners over the faulty lights to ease the chaos.

Despite the outage, traffic seemed to flow pretty well with motorists taking their time to ease into the direction they needed to go, with no problems reaching the MyWelshpool news desk all day.

But, again, it raises eye brows as to the state of the response to the problem with the traffic lights which were knocked out by an electrical fire way back in January. Temporary lights have been in place since at huge expense.

Work was delayed, we were told, due to an elusive part not being available but after months of waiting, it finally started last month. However, the lack of urgency has irked the town once again with Sunday’s issue leaving one driver to describe it as “an absolute shambles”.

“There was a long queue going all the way down Berriew Street, and in the end a driver got out to tell the car at the front to just go despite the lights being on red,” he said. “The poor young girl was very nervous and at The Cross there were cars coming from all three junctions. It was an absolute shambles.”