50mph limit call for Oswestry's bypass
Part of the A5 in Shropshire should have its speed limit cut to 50mph, a councillor said today.
Oswestry town councillor Saffron Rainey said there were too many accidents on the town's bypass, which incorporates both the A5 and A483 trunk roads. Earlier this month the Highways Agency imposed a 50mph speed limit for a short stretch of the bypass at Maesbury Road.
Mike Lloyd a Highways Agency officer said there had been 14 fatal and serious injuries on the junction between 2005 and 2010.
"In a significant number of these collisions, speed was considered to be a contributory factor," Mr Lloyd said.
"To help improve safety at the junction a 50 miles an hour speed limit is being introduced on the lit section of the A483."
The speed limit, reduced from 60 miles an hour, stretches for a length of just 1,000 metres.
Councillor Rainey welcomed the safety improvements at the junction but he said the entire bypass should have the speed limit reduced.
"All the way to the Gobowen junction there are accidents and this would calm traffic speeds," he said.
But Councillor Rainey admitted that unless the speed limit was policed, there would always be speeding.
Campaigners for improvements to safety on the bypass have been calling for the staggered junction to be converted to a roundabout. But the Highways Agency has ruled this out saying there is no money in the budget for such extensive works.
When the bypass was built more than 20 years ago there were appeals for it to be a dual carriageway but financial pressures meant the government decreed it could only a single carriageway road.
Local MP Owen Paterson has in the past campaigned for making the road into a dual carriageway.
By Sue Austin
