Extra Escape Gates to Help Drivers

THE Highways Agency has unveiled a £490,000 project to extend a scheme designed to help drivers escape long queues after serious incidents on the North West motorway network.

The Highways Agency in Cheshire, Greater Manchester, Merseyside and south Lancashire is installing six more emergency crossover gates between key junctions along motorways in the region – with the M62 getting a gate for the first time.

Seven gates have already been installed at key locations along the M6 and M56 over the past year but the new financial year has heralded a further investment to help cut congestion.

The special, 16 metre, emergency crossover gates are designed to allow quick and easy access between carriageways otherwise protected by the continuous central reservation barrier.

The gates will be used to free ‘trapped traffic’ when major incidents block a carriageway, potentially causing hours of delays for drivers stuck behind the incident.

In the event of a carriageway along the motorway being blocked, the gates can be opened and traffic can be turned around and away from the incident using one or two lanes along the opposite carriageway.

At previous major incidents the Highways Agency has sometimes cut the central barrier but that can be time-consuming and also relies on there being some kind of hard standing across the central reservation to prevent larger vehicles from sinking and getting stuck.

When traffic is turned around in such incidents, the lanes being used are coned off from the rest of the carriageway to allow turning traffic to merge safely further along with the vehicles already on the open carriageway.

The stretches of the M56 and M6 between junctions have been chosen because of the comparative ease of installation in the locations but also because they are areas where there have been a high number of incidents causing congestion.

The extra gates are being installed at the following locations:-

• M62 – between junctions 21 and 22 (a distance of approximately three miles) Milnrow to Rishworth, one gate

• M6 – between junctions 16 and 17 (eight miles) Barthomley to Sandbach, one gate

• M6 – between junctions 18 and 19 (eight miles) Holmes Chapel to Knutsford, two gates

• M6 – between junctions 26 and 27 (five miles) Orrell to Standish, one gate

• M56 – between junctions 12 and 14 (seven miles) Runcorn and Hapsford, one gate

Andy Withington, Highways Agency Area Performance Manager for Cheshire, Merseyside, Greater Manchester and south Lancashire, said:- “We are always looking at ways in which we can minimise the impact of major incidents on drivers and have already installed a number of gates in north Lancashire and Cumbria. Providing these extra gates this year will give us even greater room for manoeuvre to help drivers caught behind serious incidents and help us in our battle against congestion and driver delays."

LETTER TO EDITOR:- "LOST CONTACT"

"I was a Southport foreign student for three summers some years ago. So I kept in touch with my host family since then however two years ago I stopped getting more news from my host mother. Although I wrote her some letters and even I sent a registered post note I never got a reply. I would like to know if any of your readers could tell me where I can write-an official institution in Southport, I mean-in order to try to find what it has happened. Thanks for your help." Roberto
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Editor's note:- "Sorry to hear you lost contact. If you can let us have the name of the host, we can ask our readers to get her to contact you."

LIVERPOOL ONE REWARDED GOLD AT THE GREEN APPLE AWARDS

LIVERPOOL 1 has been rewarded the National Gold Award, for its Biofuel initiative, at the Green Apple Awards held by The Green Organisation.

In what was seen as a first for a retail and leisure destination in the UK, Liverpool ONE announced the launch of its groundbreaking Biofuel Initiative; this involved collecting waste cooking oils from several of its many restaurants and recycling it into clean biodiesel; these were then used to run Liverpool ONE’s fleet of estate vehicles.

The Green Apple Awards, the annual international campaign to recognise, reward and promote environmental best practice around the world, are established as one of the major environmental recognition schemes, both in the UK and internationally.

This award identifies Liverpool ONE as a development that is taking responsibility for the safekeeping of our environment for generations to come

Judges form The Green Apple Awards said:- “This retail and leisure facility has a lot of waste cooking oil as one of its by products. Staff at the centre had the inspirational idea to reuse this as Biofuel, which was found to be both feasible and viable economically, reusing twelve tonnes of oil annually.”

Chris Bliss, Estate Director at Liverpool ONE comments:- “The acknowledgement from The Green Organisation’s Green Apple Awards is a win we are particularly proud of. As a vital part of Liverpool’s economy we feel that Liverpool ONE should play a role preserving the environment. The Biofuels Initiative, overtime, will help lower the carbon footprint of Liverpool ONE and individual retailers, it is a key element within Liverpool ONE’s environmental strategy. We hope this award win will act as a catalyst for other retail developments to follow our environmental lead.”

This latest win brings the total number of awards won by Liverpool ONE to 39 since opening in May 2008.

‘SUPERSIZE VS SUPERSKINNY’ WANTS YOU!

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