Traffic Chaos In Langley Mill

Well if that's the best they can manage in Langley Mill with just a bit of a hole, then I hate to think what it'll be like when they do the roundabout for Asda. Everything came to a standstill today at about 6pm because the traffic lights were broken.

Traffic movement had already been slow most of the day with this bit of 'traffic management'. Backing all the way up to Heanor one way and Eastwood the other. Apparently traffic was being diverted [I did see the signs] through Langley Mill because of resurfacing work on Woodlinkin bypass.

Don't people in charge of highways ever communicate with each other? Surely they must have known there were going to be hold-ups in Langley Mill - seeing as Derbyshire County Council had approved the Asda TM [so it says in latest residents newsletter] - without diverting more traffic through our poor village/town.
 
Back to this evening ... The lights on Cromford Road stayed permanently on red, as did the ones from Heanor to Eastwood, the ones from Eastwood to Heanor remains a mystery to me as I wasn't nosy enough to venture that far but the good news is - the crossing lights not far away [usually disabled when traffic management is in force] were working perfectly ... and frequently, adding a little extra zing to the entertainment.

Needless to say there were some risks taken as people just couldn't sit waiting forever but there were the usual few twits who took the risk to extremes by hurtling along in the Eastwood direction at upwards of 50mph, it would only take a like minded person to do the same thing at the same time in the other direction for there to be an accident.
 
We did hear one screech but by then the journalist [yeah, right] in me had told the grumpy old man to get a move on - and we'd continued on our walk around the sights [sites?] of Langley Mill, taking in a close up view of the back of Netto and mere minutes later, another look at the scrap that makes up Heanor Haulage - so I could get to my beloved computer and keyboard.

Things seemed to be managing reasonably OK on that corner up to today without resorting to traffic lights, it was all coned off but maybe they had to give in because it was left turn only out of Cromford Road. The GOM witnessed two people in less than 2 minutes turning right, he was talking to the site manager at the time and he said that there'd be a smash at this rate.

Just to say that when I started writing this, er, newsflash? [drivel] it was still exactly the same down there. Everyone waiting on Cromford Road and mad dashes from either direction on Station Road [the time is at the bottom of this post].

We did see a policeman at one point, I'd have thought he'd have stayed somewhere on the bend near The Mill pub to try to direct traffic as everyone would be able to see him from there but he seemed to have disappeared.

As we continued on our way round we had a word with one of the Asda site men, he said he was waiting for an engineer to fix the lights. Common sense would have told anyone - well, any woman [and incidentally the GOM] - to move the cones further to one side as they weren't actually doing anything and to chuck the traffic lights into the river ...