For many Macclesfield residents it was not a 'good' Friday, as traffic works started in the town centre for five long months.
Temporary traffic lights will be making an unwelcome appearance on Park Lane as United Utilities upgrade their water mains on the busy commuter road. Following this, the road works will be moving up to the entrance of Macclesfield's State-Of-The-Art new Learning Zone, where new traffic signals are being installed until the end of July.
To add insult to injury, traffic lights in and around the centre of town are being upgraded - and this huge phase of work will start on the same day! This £600,000 road repair phase will last until September, so expect a long, hot summer sat in your car at temporary lights in town!
The Macclesfield UTC (for those not in the know, that's Urban Traffic Control) will be very similar to the system in place in Chester, where traffic-light controlled junctions are linked and co-ordinated in a bid to reduce town centre congestion.
Busy roads with crossing systems such as Mill Lane, Brook Street and Buxton Road will be kitted out with sensors that can detect if a pedestrian is taking longer than the usual given time to cross, and will allow them more time accordingly. This may be useful for Elderly residents and those crossing with children, for whom crossing these busy streets may be a nerve-wracking process.
These sensors will also prevent the annoyance that often faces drivers who get stopped at a red light when no-one is waiting to cross because the button has been pressed. The sensors can tell if the pedestrian has crossed over before the lights are red and cancel the signal.
Finally, the super sensors can detect the presence of a bus and will give it priority.
Further plans include installing CCTV cameras to monitor traffic and send all the information to a traffic control point in the town hall so that faults can be sorted quickly.
And this is all just phase one! The second phase - which may well last until Christmas - plans to encorporate the Learning Zone, Bond Street and Congleton Road junctions into the UTC.
Maybe one good thing will come out of all this madness and mayhem - people will get so sick of the now lengthy drive to work they will ditch the cars and walk in to town? Or perhaps that is wishful thinking for the modern-day commuter!
