Anyone on the Isle of Wight on Bank Holiday Monday requiring the use of Sat Nav will have, according to their Sat Nav, encountered a series of ‘road closures’ across the Island.
By Tuesday morning, some of the ‘road closures’ were still in place, so News OnTheWight wrote to Island Roads and the Isle of Wight council (IWC) to find out what had gone wrong.
IWC: Published to ensure no highway works could be planned
An Isle of Wight Council spokesperson told News OnTheWight,
“Details of the road closures for the Tour of Britain event were published on One.Network to ensure no highway works could be planned in the two weeks leading up to and including the event on Sunday 11th September.
“This information was picked up by Google traffic data which feeds many of the sat nav systems, unfortunately interpreting these as live road closures and when this became apparent, it was quickly remedied.”
Who actually uploaded this information – Island Roads or IWC wasn’t disclosed.
If it was as they said – to try and stop road works being planned – why did they undo it?
Single tweet by Island Roads
There was a single tweet by Island Roads, a strange choice as who is likely to see that?
What is the likelihood of a visitor having the impulse to follow Island Roads’ Twitter channel on the off-chance that they might learn why the large number of roads on the Island have been marked as closed.
If they did want to let people know, a more usual route would be to send info to the media. None was received.
Why the delay in hearing back?
Because of the nature of the relationship between Island Roads and the IWC, any responses to the media have to be signed off by both parties.
Therefore, although Island Roads were aware of what the problem was on Monday and probably could have just replied straight away with the answer, when we asked on Tuesday morning, it took until late on Wednesday night before News OnTheWight received a response.
