A CALL has been made for motorway-style traffic patrols to tackle the hold-ups which plague thousands of drivers every day on one of the area’s busiest roads.

The A31 through the New Forest has averaged a traffic jam every day this year, the Daily Echo can reveal.

In the first 11 weeks – 77 days – of 2011, police recorded 100 different incidents on the 12 miles between the Dorset boundary near Ringwood and the M27 at Cadnam.

Incidents which have held up the traffic have included accidents, breakdowns, fires, animals on the carriageway and police stopping suspected drink-drivers.

Even minor incidents can soon cause five or six mile-long queues and motorists have described the road as ‘hell’.

Paul Watters of the AA said problems on the New Forest stretch were exacerbated by steep gradients which make for large speed differentials, causing bunching and delays.

“The slightest hiccup causes huge problems,” said Mr Watters.

He said it would be useful to have Highways Agency patrols, currently limited to motorways, on trunk roads.

“I would have thought it would be a useful scenario to spread their operations to that type of road, which has as many accidents as motorways,” he said.

This year’s 100 incidents on the route have included:

• 29 crashes

• seven reports of hazards ranging from icy roads to dead animals or parts of vehicles on the carriageways

• 25 breakdowns

• 40 “vehicle-related incidents” including police checks, animals on the road and vehicle fires.

Last week alone there were three fires, two involving cars and one a lorry.

All led to call-outs for Burley and Lyndhurst firefighters, but in two cases tenders were turned around after help proved unnecessary. The cost of each call is put at £292 per hour per fire engine.

Last Friday, westbound drivers had to endure five-mile long queues after a tanker full of aviation fuel suffered a burst tyre at Ringwood. There were also six-mile tailbacks yesterday morning after a two-car shunt at Stoney Cross.

The previous week, there was a major diesel spillage when a lorry broke down near Stoney Cross, leading to a 16-hour lane closure before it was resurfaced and reopened.

Ringwood Hampshire county councillor Steve Rippon-Swaine puts the problems down to “sheer volume of traffic and no upgrades”.

He added: “There’s no magic lantern. I regret that we can’t do something, but at least there are some signs going up to slow traffic through the town.”

Sergeant Alex Rawdon-Smith of Totton Roads Policing Unit said: “Generally collisions are caused by driver error, driver distraction or impairment. On high-speed, high-volume roads such as the A31 the impact is magnified.”

A Highways Agency statement said it had incident support units supporting the police on the road but traffic officers only routinely patrolled “motorways and significant trunk roads”.

“The A31 between M27 junction one and Ringwood has a significantly lower collision rate than many other roads in the area, assessed against the number of vehicle miles travelled,” it said.

Signage planned for the A31 between Poulner Hill and Ringwood would tell drivers of approaching traffic conditions.