New road layout ‘will bring chaos’
Tesco says it is proposing to improve the road system in the centre of the village as part of plans for a new store off Lever Street.
The new road layout includes making Lever Street one-way on the approach to its junction with Church Street, introducing a section of red tarmac at the junction of Church Street, Market Street and Ainsworth Road.
Three new pedestrian crossings will also be installed on local roads. But campaigners against plans for a new Tesco warn the changes could create traffic chaos.
Tesco’s corporate affairs manager, Matthew Magee said: “We have been able to design a fantastic scheme that will create 100 new jobs and regenerate the derelict Pennine Pets Factory site.
“The local response has been extremely positive to the plans.”
“We need to make sure the local road network works as well as it can for everyone. The safety of pedestrians is always a priority and with the new puffin crossings, improved road surfacing, traffic calming measures, and wider footpaths, local residents will find it much easier to get around the centre of Little Lever.”
There are also plans to introduce double yellow lines along Ainsworth Road and on the Sharples Court side of Lever Street, so the local roads remain clear from obstruction.
Tesco is proposing to replace its current Metro store on Market Street with a new supermarket at the derelict Pennine Pets Factory site creating around 100 new jobs.
A decision on the Tesco plans is expected in the next few months.
Little Lever resident and former councillor Sean Hornby said: “This junction is very bad as it is.
“If you suddenly put traffic lights in place, a one-way system and double yellow lines then other roads surrounding the area could become rat runs.“By making it a one-way system, it could create an even bigger problem. Custom to local shops could also be affected.”
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We need a logical plan
I read the article twice and, at the end, I have to agree with Sean Hornby.
Apart from the chaos in the immediate area of the junctions of Ainsworth, Market Street, Lever Street and Church Street, he mentions my main concern — rat runs.
Redcar Road, during school times, along with Aintree Road, is already a rat run.
You have a junior school, St Teresa’s at the Church Street end of Redcar Road and, at the opposite end of Aintree Road, you have Mytham Road, which is very narrow and on which you have two medical centres and a junior school.
I will not ask Bolton Highways how they will make our roads safer, because they have no idea.
I will not even go on about how many jobs Tesco promised to create when they opened their Walkden branch, only for a number to be laid off when it was finally up and running smoothly.
Come up with a logical road plan that involves input from Little Lever residents, who will suffer from extra traffic, and then maybe something sensible can be worked out.
Mr O’Connor Bolton
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Don't let Tesco develop in Little Lever... says ASDA
Asda has sent a letter of objection to Bolton Council’s planning department, citing itself as an “interested party”.
The nearest Asda stores are in Farnworth, Burnden Park and Radcliffe.
In October, Ladson Commercial Ltd, acting on behalf of Tesco, submitted a plan for a superstore on the former Pennine Pets site in Lever Street.
Tesco says the store will generate 100 new jobs on top of the 49 staff already at the existing Tesco Metro in Market Street, who are guaranteed jobs at the new store.
Residents have set up a Facebook group — Say No To Little Lever Tesco, Save Our Village— because of concerns about the impact it will have on the village and potential traffic problems.
Asda’s three-page document is the latest objection to be sent to the planning department.
It claims the number of jobs the store will create is wrong, that there are too many car parking spaces and there are more preferable sites elsewhere.
An Asda spokesman said: “We have submitted an objection to the plans. “We feel as though the size of the site that Tesco is proposing will have a negative impact on the town centre.”
Little Lever resident Sean Hornby, a former councillor and former chairman of the planning committee, said he had never known of a supermarket objecting to another store’s plans when they were not directly affected.
He added: “It is very unusual, I must admit.
I was a bit shocked myself. It will kill off the village. This will be just the final nail in the coffin.”
Residents are also calling for a public consultation on the traffic proposals, which would see Lever Street made one-way.
Tesco spokesman Matthew Magee said: “We've had great feedback from the residents of Little Lever who are excited about a new store in their town, that would create new jobs and regenerate the Pennine Pets Factory site.”
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We don’t need Tesco
The only “logical plan” to traffic chaos in Little Lever is to say “No” to Tesco.
It is obvious we need a 20mph speed limit through the village, a thriving avenue of shops, benches, green spaces to sit and decent safe places to cross the roads.
We don’t need Tesco to tell us how to do it. Don’t privatise our village.
Name and address supplied
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One-way traffic would not solve problem of having supermarket
I read the article about the roads surrounding the proposed Tesco store in Little Lever.It was stated that the planners (most likely Tesco’s own) had proposed a one-way system for Lever Street! This shows that these people don’t live and drive in Little Lever — this idea just won’t work.
If you look on any online map, you will find that Radcliffe Road, Hill Top and Lever Street are shown as one colour; that is because this is the main artery route from Darcy Lever and beyond into the village.
If you can’t drive down this road from where it separates from Hill Top, then your only choice is to go down Dearden Street; this has, at its end, a really bad junction with Church Street.
Avoided at all costs by most people who live here, to get around this junction people cut down Rydal Road and this used to be a noted “rat run”; to cure the council added speed bumps to put people off. The residents certainly wouldn’t be happy if it was to once again be a major route.
The other route is to stay on Radcliffe Road, then turn on to Victory Road and then Ainsworth Road; a longer distance to end up at the same junction which is not a good one. If the one-way was the other way, with you not being able to go from Market Street to Lever Street, then, if travelling from the village centre, you would turn up Ainsworth Road.
But if travelling from the other side of the village, then again you would use Dearden Street. However, turning into that street in anything bigger than a van is not easy.
I don’t see any one-way systems being workable, but the trouble is, by the time we hear about these things, they have already been rubber stamped to go ahead. There was also mention of extra crossings, which is fine. However one thing I have noted in recent times is that if a crossing isn’t in the exact spot people want to cross, then they don’t use it!
Lastly, if Tesco has offered a sweetener to the council in the form of “regeneration money”, it should be spent in Little Lever and not in any other wards.
If other places want the money spending on them, let them have Tescos built near them.
Edward Dicker Bolton
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Village traffic misery ahead
I was walking from the centre of the village past the Tesco extra store and noticed an articulated lorry waiting to turn right out of Lever Street on to Church Street towards Moses Gate.
Due to the size of his vehicle a car turning left into Lever Street had to mount the kerb to pass it.
Then as the lorry pulled out the entire junction was blocked whilst he turned on to Church Street. This was just one vehicle using this junction.
Can anybody imagine what it will be like when firstly we have construction traffic using it and then the delivery vehicles for Tesco? It is blatantly obvious Bolton Council's planning officers have no idea whatsoever what will happen at this junction.
Traffic going through Little Lever to Radcliffe/Bury will simply turn right at the mini roundabout on to Redcar Road.
Then at the top they will turn left into Aintree and then on to the very narrow Mytham Road before coming to the roundabout on the Radcliffe side of the village, turning right there to complete their journey.
Of course the reverse of this route will be used by traffic from Radcliffe and Bury heading towards Bolton and Farnworth. Thus proving that the planning department have obviously never left their nice warm offices to actually see what will happen to Little Lever.
Mr J O’Connor Bolton
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You are sounding like a cracked record
Personally, I think that with these suggestions he has done himself and his cause “a thick one”.
In his panic to fit the square peg of pedestrian safety into the round hole of junction capacity, he has with his proposals, in one fell swoop, managed to spread the traffic misery even further afield across the village and got the backs up of another couple of hundred residents who will pay the price of this completely unnecessary development.
The junction at peak times is already a nightmare. Anything, including this development, which will make it worse, is nonsensical and unacceptable.
As his own transport consultant has stated, the only configuration which works at this junction is the existing one.
Short of buying and demolishing the adjacent properties to open it out into a decent sized roundabout, no liberal application of snake oil will alter this. If Tesco are not prepared to fund the approximate £3 million cost of this, then so be it, but a lorry load of red tarmac and a couple of no entry signs won’t cut it.
The offer of £18,750 of Section 106 moneys for a development which hopefully for them will turn over some £19 million is testament to the fact that they’re trying to do this on the cheap.
Why doesn’t he come clean and admit that the only reason Tesco are doing this is to stop Aldi or the like doing it.
Stick with the Metro, Mr McGee, get it staffed up and stop dreaming that all of a sudden we’re gonna stop going to Asda.
T Mortimer Little Lever
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Commonsense ‘software’ tells us a store would make things worse
This, of course, is completely denied by Tesco and its developers, Ladson’s.
In support of their view, they have submitted a transport assessment which asserts that, even with the extra generated traffic, if Lever Street was turned into a one-way street and three puffin crossings were installed in the vicinity of the junction then everything in the garden is going to be lovely and there is no reason for anyone to get concerned.
They have been seemingly assisted in this exercise by Bolton Council highways department which, one would have imagined, had some knowledge of the geography and day-to-day reality of the current peak hour chaos.
But no! The transport assessment is arrived at by using computer modelling done, in this instance, somewhere in the West Midlands.
They’ve actually had three goes at this, using three different software modelling products in order to get anywhere near proving that the junction will work within capacity.
A cynic might think that if at first you don’t get the result you want then try something else until you do.
All this, (and more), to my mind, creates suspicion about the competence of the authors of the aforementioned assessment.
We, Oop North, in the meantime, rely on our human, brain-type computers and our common-sense software to conclude that sticking a superstore with 170 car-parking spaces within 50 yards of an already nightmare junction is going to make a bad situation much worse.
I fail to understand what part of the above Tesco and the developer can’t “get”, although I do see why they would never admit to doing so.
Happily, our ward councillors can spot “trouble at t’mill” and have agreed to convene a public meeting where the views of residents and others might be gauged.
This junction problem, on a major arterial route, has existed for some considerable time.
Only a proposal which improves the situation is acceptable. Anything which makes it worse must be rejected.
Paul Richardson Ripon Close Little Lever
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Our opinions don’t count
I say when it is built because the only thing that stands in its way is public opinion.
Regarding help from our ward councillors, I wouldn’t hold my breath.
They are Labour councillors and will do exactly what the leader of the council tells them.
There are numerous traffic problems around Bolton created by the highways department ‘computer model’ way of doing things. For once, let them come down to Little Lever and see what will happen to roads, and the people who live on them, like Mytham, Aintree, Redcar, Fearnyside and Dearden. For these are the roads that will be worst affected by a new Tesco.
