Traffic issues in Blyth likened to 'Rubik's cube' as difficulties laid bare

The comments were made by the deputy leader of Northumberland County Council in a discussion around “gridlock” in the town.

The town is beset by large queues at peak times which have been exacerbated by ongoing development work, particularly at the site of the new Newsham Station for the Northumberland Line.

Long-awaited proposals for a new relief road are expected to be submitted for planning permission by the end of January, although the project is dependant on Government funding.

At Monday’s meeting of the council’s corporate services and economic growth scrutiny committee, members and representatives of prominent community organisations within the town were discussing the £90m Energising Blyth programme.

Candice Randall, director of the Briardale House community hub, raised concern about new visitors getting into the town centre.

She said: “What consideration has been given to transport access to the new Cultural Hub? Have any members of the panel travelled into Blyth recently? If they haven’t I can tell you it is not easy – it’s gridlock.

“I travel in every day and every morning and evening I’m faced with a line of traffic, of stalled cars with roundabouts clogged because people are so desperate to get through nobody is paying any attention to the rules of the road. People are avoiding Laverock Hall Road because they don’t want to get caught in the traffic caused by the railway.

“People are not going to bother going into the town centre. I have seen plans for a relief road and I would certainly like to be involved in more plans for that, because the relief road comes in after the traffic and not before – it’s not going to work.”

Cllr Richard Wearmouth, the council’s deputy leader, pointed out that the disruption was being partially caused by significant investment into the town. However, he also admitted that a perfect solution to the town’s traffic problems was proving difficult to identify.

He said: “I’m very, very frustrated but not nearly as frustrated as residents of Blyth. The problem is we’re doing so much in Blyth.

“Its a real issue, but not an issue we can correct easily I’m afraid. If you’re building a railway station and doing all this work in the town centre, we have got stuff coming in left right and centre.

“People are going to be tearing their hair out and I know they are because I have sat in that traffic – but I don’t sit in it every day. It is not pleasant.

“The worst part at the moment is Newsham at the moment, but they will be finished imminently. These are some very big investments into transports into the town.”

The station at Newsham had been due to open in December, but on Friday the council announced that it had been delayed and would now not open until “early 2025”. An exact date has not yet been specified.

Speaking on the relief road, Coun Wearmouth continued: “There are a lot of routes that we looked at and did a lot of work to find the best route. The best was through the bottom of the new Chase Meadows housing estate in Kitty Brewster.

“We would have loved to have threaded a road through there but ultimately Persimmon had a planning permission and built out their houses, so there was nothing we could do to stop them which was very, very frustrating. The option we are left with is dualling Laverock Hall Road and linking up to the Three Horseshoes Roundabout and doing some connectivity work to get the big estate south of Asda linked up with other bits of the network.

“The problem is that huge estate has 800 homes and everyone is trying to get out onto one roundabout – it doesn’t work and it will never work.

“That is fundamentally the Rubik’s Cube that we try to solve in terms of transport for Blyth – and it is not one that has a perfect solution.”