ONCE again the Echo has featured a terrible accident – this time on the Weymouth Relief Road - and reported on the traffic chaos resulting from it while the road was closed.

We have observed that there is a major problem in local road design, which causes enormously long queues of vehicles in such circumstances – that is, the ‘kerb build-outs’ on the roads that have to be used as alternative routes.

In three locations we have seen queues created from build-outs – perhaps the most important one being on Dorchester Road at Broadwey Village Stores, where there used to be a pedestrian crossing.

The problem is that southbound vehicles cannot readily get past the blockage formed by the build-out, as they never have priority; and when there is a considerable amount of traffic in both directions resulting from the Relief Road closure, the queue of vehicles southbound builds up rapidly and stretches back a very great distance. As an alternative route for the main access into Weymouth, this is surely an intolerable situation.

Likewise, we have seen a long line of westbound vehicles waiting to pass the build-out in Radipole Village by the Old Rectory when Weymouth Way was closed, and also on Radipole Park Drive in similar circumstances, where northbound traffic must wait for ages to pass the build-out at the north end of the long straight stretch.

In these circumstances, obstructions such as build-outs are not so much traffic ‘calming’ measures as traffic infuriating. Surely it would be best to learn from experience and scrap those which result in such chaos.

Brenda Pickett

Roman Road

Weymouth