Earlier today Island Roads issued a press release asking residents to make sure they followed road diversion signs that will be in place during overnight roadworks in the Lake Hill area each night this week (tonight’s work has since been postponed due to bad weather forecast).
Many felt the release read like a wagging finger aimed at residents for not doing as they were told. However, several readers have been in touch with a different side of the story.
Roads closed before diversion signs in place
Bianca Wheeler was the first to dispute the press release. She said,
“I was there! They had CLOSED the roads BEFORE putting any diversion signs out!! Even I was confused! Chaos!”
Gary Hickey chipped in with,
“I find that sometimes the diversion signs being put around various works by this company are pretty confusing at the least. According to my friend who drove from Sandown to Lake last night, the problem was all the traffic going down Roseway as you couldn’t exit on to the main road from The Fairway.”
Traffic chaos
Angela Horton, however, gave a more detailed account of her experience of getting caught in the diversions and congestion last night.
She posted the following on Facebook last night,
Come on Island Roads – sort your road closures and diversion signs out.
Great you’ve got the road closed signs in place from Morton Common/Avenue Road /Perowne Way junction, but no diversion signs, so everyone is continuing along Avenue Road, as no indication of where the road is actually closed.
Get to the Heights to see workmen just closing the road at 19.45hrs when the road was advertised as being closed from 18.30hrs – something’s not right.
Turnaround and go all the way back to Perowne and find all the traffic coming the other way (at 19.55hrs tonight) is tailed back to the Spar Shop on Perowne Way. Surmise that this is going to be a nightmare!
Cars parked both sides along Perowne Way so difficult for cars to get through given the continual traffic coming both ways.
Get to end of Perowne Way, turn left into The Fairway to be greeted with a road closed sign, but no diversion signs. Turn down Roseway and left into Lake Green Road. Lake Green Road is tight enough as it is, with cars parked one side, but in addition to that you’ve got the traffic from Sandown Road coming towards you (as no diversion signs sending you along Newport Road and round the back way) along with a coach that has no option but to go up the kerb as there is nowhere for the oncoming traffic to go.
Please try and sort the diversion route ASAP so that where possible traffic doesn’t meet each other or is it just that no-one can get in or out of Lake for the next five nights heading to/from Sandown.
Do I really have five nights of this chaos coming up?!
How does that balance with press release?
OnTheWight has been in touch with Island Roads to ask how they balanced the content of the press release with the responses we’d received from readers.
We’ve been promised a response, once those with the answers who have been out and about today return to the office.
Update: 5th June
Response from Island Roads received this morning can be read here
