Phones still 'ringing off the wall' as commuters voice anger over ongoing Shore Road traffic jam in Newtownabbey

East Antrim Alliance man Stewart Dickson told the News Letter that his office phone is ringing "off the wall", and that on one online platform he uses – a free app called 'Next Door' – about 1,500 people are following his updates on the subject per day.

Meanwhile fellow East Antrim MLA Davy Hilditch said perhaps 2,500 people had been in touch with him about it so far.

• WHAT IS THE PROBLEM? •

The traffic jam centres on the Shore Road in Whiteabbey, at the northern edge of greater Belfast.

It is the main road connecting the wider Carrickfergus area (population: roughly 30,000+) and large parts of Newtownabbey (population roughly 66,000) with the city centre.

It has four lanes: two going south (Belfast-bound), and two going north (towards Carrickfergus).

Phoenix Gas started digging up the road about a fortnight ago, causing the two Belfast-bound lanes to be cut down to one.

This caused enormous tailbacks, especially around rush hour, with some commuters reporting delays of about an hour getting into Belfast.

This reporter was in one such queue off-peak last week (about 3.30pm on Friday), and it lasted roughly 25 minutes.

There are no bus lanes in the area, so those too are stuck in the traffic queues.

The work is set to continue into December.

Its purpose is to lay new pipelines linking the Belfast network to gas that arrives into Carrick from GB.

As such, the roadworks will slowly move down from the Whiteabbey area towards Carrick over time.

• ‘FEW PRACTICAL SOLUTIONS OUT THERE’ •

Mr Dickson said: "This is effectively a 26-week project. Work started and everybody went 'Wait – what is happening here?' and all of that. There was clearly very inadequate pre-information."

This had consisted of sending letters to householders immediately on the road itself, he said, "but that doesn't take account of the thousands of people who actually use the road every day".

The idea of turning two of the remaining three lanes into Belfast-bound ones at rush hour, so traffic doesn't have to crawl along a single lane, had been rejected by Phoenix on the grounds that the road is too narrow, he said.

Another proposal, doing the work during evenings and nights, was rejected on health-and-safety grounds – though Mr Dickson says he has known roadworkers to do this elsewhere, and it could just be "a cost exercise" (in that Phoenix doesn't want to pay the workers night-time rates).

Mr Dickson also pointed out that, since July 1, schools are off: when they return in September, the situation will worsen again.

"They are saying ‘use alternative routes’ – but there really aren’t alternative routes,” he said.

"They [Phoenix] are working on it.

"They’re ahead of schedule, which might shorten it.

"There are major roundabouts they have to get through... one is at the University of Ulster, the other is at Shorelands, the third is Station Road in Greenisland.

"They’ve agreed they will try and do those at the weekends rather than weekdays.”

But overall he warned: “There aren’t many practical solutions out there to deal with this.”

DUP man Davy Hilditch said he knows of about 2,500 complaints, saying the work has brought “nothing but nuisance, anger, and frustration”.

"It’s causing major problems at certain times of day, there’s absolutely no doubt about it,” he said.

"Those people that have to be in work for about 8am, 8.30am, 9am in Belfast will have a high degree of frustration.

“They [Phoenix] have been very reluctant to take on board change…

“I don’t know why overnight work can’t actually be explored – particularly around summer months at the minute.

"I’m sitting watching the sun come up around four o’clock most mornings, so it’s not like they’d be working in the dark totally overnight.”

• ‘THERE ARE NO HOUR-LONG WAITS’ •

The News Letter got in touch with a PR firm representing Phoenix.

The company was asked four specific questions:

1) – Why is Phoenix not dealing with this by changing two of the remaining three lanes into citybound ones, to cope with the huge volume of traffic heading that way?

2) – Why is Phoenix not conducting this work at night, and leaving as much of the four lanes open as possible during the day?

3) – Why is Phoenix conducting this work during morning rush hour specifically?

4) – Why is Phoenix not employing more people to get the job finished faster?

Here was its reply:

“Phoenix Energy is carrying out essential network reinforcement works on the Shore Road Newtownabbey to support the needs of our existing and growing customer base.

“While we regret the impact this is having to Belfast-bound commuter traffic we continue to work with the Department for Infrastructure and other stakeholders to help identify areas of concern and to take action to ease congestion where possible.

“Additional signage will be put in place in Whiteabbey Village from early next week [July 3 onwards] and two-lane traffic exiting the construction site, in the direction of the Station Road roundabout continues to be available.

"The work is progressing slightly ahead of target at this stage.

“Phoenix Energy are committed to carrying out these works in a manner that minimises wider impact for the duration of these essential works and we will keep local representatives informed of progress with the work and with any proposed traffic management issues.

“Timescales and updates on the works will be available across our digital platforms.”

The PR firm stressed that “there are no hour-long waits”, and said that during last week, “the average queue times in the morning traffic are 16.5 minutes at the Shore Road and 10.3 minutes on the Top Road” (there is no road called ‘Top Road’ – this seems to be a reference to the Doagh Road).

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