Tory Traffic Chaos in Rochester

The state of our towns road system is now beyond a joke to Council tax payers and residents.

Anyone who has had to travel from one end of Medway from another will now take 30 minutes to an hour to complete a journey that should take 15 minutes.

Residents should squarely blame Conservative Councillors because it is the current administration in Gun Wharf that has so monumentally failed to manage this.

Medway residents have now had four years of unmitigated road chaos which has been monumentally mismanaged by Tories. They have watched Medway Conservatives spend £2.5m on a road system in Chatham which doesn't work (because no one is following the taxi/bus only route rules) and have suffered the infamy of gas works on Gun Road which literally cut off Chatham from Gillingham for 2 months.

The current works on Corporation Street, Rochester are causing absolute chaos. I say absolute chaos because it is an unmitigated shambles of monumental proportions. Thousands upon thousands of drivers are left for 30 minutes to an hour stuck in traffic. The entire system has collapsed and it is like an urban jungle. We have ambulances stuck, police stuck and with the level of traffic, the bus system must be suffering unmanageable delays.

People do not mind road works or improvements to the road system. They do mind un-coordinated and unnecessary works which prolong misery and which damage local business and trade, and therefore risk jobs.

These road works in Rochester are necessary. However, to wait in queues only to see no one working on a stretch of road which is a core junction in the entire Medway road-system is laughable. Or indeed, resignable if I were the Tory Councillor in charge.

It simply beggars belief that the Conservatives can just ignore this. They just inhabit a different planet then those who have to use the roads on a daily basis.

Inner city Rochester and Chatham have seen a welcome influx of tourists over the last four weeks for the Dickens Festival and the Castle market which has been a success. The problem is that someone in the Medway Conservative administration sanctioned massive works on the Corporation Street at the same time. Surely, one department should be speaking with another. This should have been rubber stamped for January not December (a core trading month) and it should have been 24 hour, 7 days a week works.

Today, despite the gridlock there were no workmen on the works at all. So not only was there absolute paralysis but it seems the lights have been left on automatic and the works left until Monday.

The same old tired excuses get trotted out about spending the money before the budget runs out, but that is total rubbish. Councillors and Council officers can pick a time for road works and they can demand it be undertaken within a longer time frame.

It may be more expensive to complete the works overnight and into weekends but given the strategic importance of that junction, that should have been considered as a natural response.

The current works in Rochester even make the traffic chaos in Chatham look well managed and that remains a £2.5m waste of money if ever there was one.

The expensive joke (because you as council tax payers are paying) however is that the Conservative administration, and it is Tory Councillors directly, have not appropriately scrutinised roadworks at all.

Despite the opposition complaining for years that important works should be undertaken at an appropriate time and if in a strategic location, very quickly. Despite residents, press and opposition screaming for years that we demand a better process for road improvements, they are all totally ignored.

We are seeing the same mismanagement now that we saw years ago. The same mistakes repeated, never a lesson learned.

It is Medway residents that are once again suffering because of this bungling administrations incompetence.

It is time for Tories to start to get a grip on traffic. They have had four years to manage this properly and they have failed every single time.

New management is required. Vote Labour in May for competence