Western Relief Road comes under scrutiny
County councillors are holding a public meeting next week to examine the Rugby Western Relief Road project.
Warwickshire County Council’s Communities Overview and Scrutiny Committee is meeting at Rugby Town Hall on March 15 to discuss the issues around the delivery of the project.
The Rugby Western Relief Road is 3.75 miles (6 kilometres) miles long and was built to relieve traffic congestion in and around Rugby caused by increased residential and industrial development. It opened to the public on September 10 last year.
The new road has significantly cut journey times and helped to mitigate environmental damage by reducing noise and air pollution within the town centre. It has also created better conditions for pedestrians, cyclists and other highway users and help to reduce the number of accidents.
According to early analysis of the road, it is used by an average of 12,000 vehicles each day and has alleviated traffic on other highways leading into the town centre. Bilton Road has seen a reduction in traffic of up to 28 per cent and 16 per cent less traffic is using Newbold Road. Using the government’s cost-benefit ratio measuring methodology, for every £1 spent, the Western Relief Road is bringing £4.50 of benefit to the local economy.
The multi-million pound scheme was constructed by Carillion and funded by the Department for Transport, Warwickshire County Council and developers. The Overview and Scrutiny Committee will examine the processes that led to delays in the scheme and it being delivered over budget, and will scrutinise areas where the county council could have worked differently to learn lessons from the project.
Cllr John Whitehouse, Chair of the Communities Overview and Scrutiny Committee, said: “We are now in a position to be able to properly scrutinise the Western Relief Road project and understand in detail why it suffered delays during its construction and exceeded its budget by millions of pounds.
“We need to establish whether the project has provided good value for taxpayers’ money and identify any lessons to be learned by the county council in the management of such major projects in future. Members of the public are welcome to attend and submit questions prior to the meeting.”
Cllr Alan Cockburn, portfolio holder for environment and economy, said: “We welcome the opportunity to explain the reasons behind the problems encountered during the delivery of the project.
“We feel the road still represents good value for money and has brought enormous benefits for Rugby. In the six months since it opened, the Western Relief Road has achieved everything we expected and more in terms of saving time for motorists and improvements in noise pollution, air quality and road safety in the town centre.”
The public is invited to attend the meeting which begins at 10am.