One of Airdrie’s busiest and most congested roads is to be improved with the installation of mini-roundabouts at two of its difficult junctions.
Work will begin on Monday to create roundabouts including dedicated right-turn lanes on the A73 Carlisle Road’s staggered crossroads with Craigneuk Avenue and South Biggar Road.
The project is scheduled to take three months and will involve “extended daily hours and work at weekends to reduce the timescale”.
North Lanarkshire Council (NLC) is having the work carried out, in association with Strathclyde Partnership for Transport, to co-ordinate with supermarket firm Lidl working on an adjacent stretch of the road as part of ongoing construction work on their new store.
Residents and councillors have campaigned for a number of years for improvements to the road layout, which often sees drivers struggle to turn right from either of the two side roads onto the busy main route.
The roundabouts are now being installed after “a new junction layout was developed following a feasibility study to assess road safety, traffic operation, pedestrian routes and engineering requirements”.
The council’s works cover the roadway from north of the junction with South Biggar Road, opposite Craigneuk Park, where the pavement will be widened to create a shared pedestrian and cycle path.
Both junctions will be widened, realigned and resurfaced with each of the roundabouts having two approach lanes on the main road, allowing traffic either to travel straight ahead or to turn right.
A new signal-controlled staggered pedestrian crossing will also be put in place across the Carlisle Road carriageway, between the two side-road junctions; with all the work due to be complete by the end of November.
New street lighting, drainage and landscaping are also included in the plans, which have been shared with neighbouring residents; while utility diversions are also required.
A spokesman for NLC said: “The work has been programmed to co-ordinate with the final roadworks at the new Lidl store on Carlisle Road, to minimise disruption locally.
“Traffic will be managed throughout using manually-controlled temporary four-way traffic signals; traffic management will be reduced outwith the busiest periods between 9.30am and 3pm to minimise queues and waiting times.”
North Lanarkshire’s junctions project joins directly onto the section of road where Lidl contractors are currently working on accesses to their under-development store – including a new entrance to the retail development car park with a dedicated right-hand turn lane.
It is immediately opposite the existing bus layby outside St Edward’s church; meaning that bus stop is being removed, with two new ones instead being created further south on either side of Carlisle Road.
Another new signal-controlled pedestrian crossing is also being put in place near the store entrance; while two existing obsolete accesses from the main road, which had previously led to the former warehouses on the site, are being removed.
Carlisle Road links Chapelhall and Petersburn with the town centre and forms part of the longer trunk road between Newhouse and Cumbernauld – which is intended to be improved by the future construction of the East Airdrie link road which will serve through traffic and also provide a road link to the new Monklands Hospital.
Gartlea and Craigneuk community councils had campaigned for improvements at the South Biggar Road and Craigneuk Avenue junctions as along ago as 2009; and an approved 2013 plan to construct a branch of Asda at Craigneuk Park included a condition to upgrade the junctions, but the supermarket chain then scrapped their store plan the following year.
All four Airdrie South councillors teamed up nearly five years ago to ask for action on congestion and traffic flow at both of the problem junctions along with the nearby Petersburn Road and Brownsburn Road intersections.
Proposals were then developed in 2018 to rebuild Craigneuk Avenue into a single crossroads with Carlisle Road and South Biggar Road, to be controlled by traffic lights, but the plan did not go ahead.