'Work is crucial to the future of town'

Divisional manager David Elliott said the new main was crucial to ensuring future water supplies for the town.

He added: "The life of the current main has expired, as the increasing number of bursts in recent years has shown.

"I made a promise last year that we would get on and replace the main and that is a promise we are fulfilling. We also undertook not to start until after the tourist season.

"As well as being a major traffic route serving Weymouth, all the major services are unfortunately concentrated in this road, so any work to replace essential services is always going to be very disruptive."

He added that, following earlier concerns about traffic delays and the speed of progress, Wessex had agreed to pump more cash into the project and improve traffic management.

He said: "The labour force is currently 18 people. We can only open a short length of works between lights and this restricts the number of people we can use in the traffic light area.

"Within the area where traffic lights are required, from Springfield Road to Nottington Lane, we have completed more than 400 metres of 600 metres, while 170 metres has been completed on the Nottington lane to Lancaster Road section. We have been working in difficult areas so far. Progress will naturally increase in the wider central section.

"We are working 12-hour days and traffic management staff are also on site 12 hours a day.

"We have requested a diversion around Lancaster Road-Greenway Road with concern from residents, but positive feedback from commuters.

"The effect of this diversion would be to enable us to remove the traffic lights on Dorchester Road by the end of January instead of March."

Resident site engineer Eddie Pearce is overseeing work and said today that the whole current section of Dorchester Road would only be four or five days behind its December 20 completion date when work shuts down for Christmas.

He added: "That remaining 50 metres will be completed in the first week of January and that will take us out of the narrow section and into the wider parts where work and traffic can be run together."

Borough council engineering manager Martyn Gallivan said today that the council was currently in discussion with Wessex Water about the requested traffic diversion and a decision would be made soon.

Dorchester Road Question Time

READERS submitted a series of questions for Wessex Water to answer about their Dorchester Road scheme. These are the answers from divisional manager David Elliott...

Has recent bad weather affected work?

No. It makes it harder to work but it doesn't affect the actual progress of work.

Is work on schedule?

We are about a week behind. That delay was caused by a culvert. Also, the old American-built Second World War concrete road was a metre thick at that point, which slowed us down.

Why is work stopping over the Christmas and New Year period?

This is to give nearby residents a peaceful Christmas and as happy a new year as possible. There would certainly not be much goodwill for that if we carried on working through the festive period.

Will the new year be as bad for traffic delay?

No, we don't believe so. Our traffic management is a lot better now because we have learned from experience. Also, a large section of the 2003 work will be able to be carried out without using any lights at all.

Is it really impossible to work 24 hours?

Nothing is impossible. The reality is that when you have works as noisy and disruptive as these are then it is not fair to inflict them on local residents while they are trying to sleep.

We know they are very disruptive because only last month the old main we are replacing burst and we had to work through the night on Dorchester Road to repair it. Residents told us how noisy it was.

Is the work really necessary?

Yes. Residents know that we have had to work on 36 days over the past two years - including three times in the last month - to deal with water main bursts. Without the work it would be reasonable to expect even more delays in 2003, and that would leave Weymouth facing the prospect of work still having to be done to replace the main. It is a trade-off: inconvenience now to avoid much more later.

Why are you asking for a traffic diversion round Greenway Road? Residents say the "narrow" point near Manor Roundabout is wide enough for a work lane and two traffic lanes.

It would be possible for three lanes, but the work lane would be incredibly cramped - we would have to lay the new main within six inches of the pavement - and there would be no room to manoeuvre to deal with other services such as electricity which might be in the area. Even with three lanes, traffic lights would still be needed when we put in the connection links to people's homes.

Does the work really have to go on to Easter?

Yes it does if we are not allowed to use the Greenway Road diversion. If we could use the diversion then we could cut work time because we would be able to close an entire carriageway and open up the work area all at once. If we could do this then traffic light use, which is causing all the delays, could be finished by the end of January instead of March.

Is there a chance it might finish early?

We are confident that we will make better progress now we are nearly through the more difficult road section. In the last two weeks we have done 150 metres instead of the 100 metres we anticipated.

Wessex promised to work from 7am until 7pm but this often doesn't happen. Is Wessex really working 12 hours?

We are. One of the misconceptions is about the number of people on site. It is not always easy to relate to work being carried out, since we often have to wait for materials such as concrete to set. If people don't see workmen on site then those workmen are generally near Manor Roundabout preparing pipes.

Lights controlling traffic flows don't seem to balance the queues, so why not use people with stop-go boards to regulate traffic?

Traffic lights are the most efficient way of managing traffic, but they are not always operated automatically. Since our early traffic management problems we have employed people to work the lights 12 hours a day in the most efficient manner possible, and they use spotters up and down the queues to determine which queue is heaviest, so the timing of the lights can be adjusted accordingly.

Why do workmen sometimes appear to be standing around doing little or no work?

They may be waiting for materials to arrive, or judging when and how to pour concrete. They may also be supervising colleagues concealed in the trench. It depends what is going on at any one point when a driver is going by. Crews work very, very hard. People passing in a car only see a snapshot of what is going on, not the whole picture.