Road changes to tackle queuing traffic at busy Bolton tip

A new entry and exit arrangements are planned at Bolton’s household recycling centre to ease queuing and congestion at peak times.

Suez, who operate the Salford Road Household Waste Recycling Centre (HWRC) have submitted proposals to ease congestion at the site by swapping the entrance and exit routes and creating 175m of ‘off-line’ queuing between the unloading areas and the access road.

Documents published by Bolton Council said access problems at the site had increased recently.

A transport statement, said: “Operational experience at the HWRC site over the past few years, particularly since the Covid 19 pandemic, has identified that the current customer vehicle arrangements have at times struggled to cope with the nature and extent of demand during busy summer seasonal periods – leading to ‘block-back’ queuing from the initial customer waste drop-off zone, along the site entry road and out onto the spine road.”

The report said that In response staff implemented temporary arrangements at busy times which included no direct entry into the centre from the A6.

Instead customer vehicles were required to continue along Salford Road before U-turning into a contraflow queueing lane.

The report added: “In practice these arrangements provide an additional 135m of queuing space.

“While these temporary arrangements have been successful in limiting the effects of block-back queuing on the A6 Salford Road junction, they are considered unsatisfactory as a permanent solution.

“The arrangements require additional staffing resources to be employed to ensure customers follow the principles of the layout correctly and to manage the build-up of site queuing.”

Key elements of the planned changes are reversing the entry and exit arrangements so the centre would have anti-clockwise one way circulation.

New road markings would reinforce the right turn exit arrangements onto the spine road from the site and remarking of the existing wide section of the site spine road would form a new extended entry lane.

There would be segregation of this lane from general traffic on Salford Road at peak times via the use of traffic cones and traffic barriers

During quieter periods, the extended queuing lane would not be required and at these times traffic would use the main carriageway to access the new customer entrance,

Planners at Bolton Council are to consider the proposals in the coming weeks.