Shrewsbury A5 delays blamed on crash which damaged signal poles
The national roads agency says a crash in the early hours of the morning forced it to close lanes at a busy roundabout near Shrewsbury so repairs could be carried out.
Traffic has been held up on the A5 between the Emstrey and Preston roundabouts immediately to the east of Shrewsbury on Thursday morning and again in the afternoon.
Closed lanes at the Emstrey island have been blamed for the severe delays, up to 37 minutes at times, which have also snaked back to the westbound A5 from Telford.
National Highways said the lanes were closed for repairs to signal poles at a crossing after a crash at the roundabout early on Thursday.
It follows a crash in October last year in which power boxes were hit by a driver and damaged, also causing long delays.
National Highways said in a statement Thursday: "A road traffic collision occurred in the early hours of this morning on the Emstrey island on the westbound approach. In the incident, two traffic signal poles on a pedestrian crossing were damaged forcing us, for safety reasons, to close a number of lanes.
"We are working to carry out the repairs and get the road fully open as quickly as possible.
"This incident involved a westbound vehicle and was on the opposite side of the roundabout to the previous collision, in which the control boxes responsible for traffic signals on half of the junction were destroyed."
