One of Brighton’s busiest roads is due to close for eight weeks for resurfacing from today (Monday 18 September).
Southern Water is resurfacing the road from the Clock Tower to just before East Street.
Brighton and Hove Buses said that it was putting diversions in place, designed to reduce disruption to customers’ journeys, but highlighted another significant set of roadworks in Lewes Road near The Level.
The company said: “The eight-week closure of North Street during road repair work, to be carried out by Southern Water, will coincide with city council work already started to improve safety at the Lewes Road, Elm Grove and Union Road junction that is expected to last a few months.”
Brighton and Hove Buses managing director Martin Harris said: “Both these two major roadwork schemes are important improvements to the smooth-running of traffic in the city and we welcome them but the fact they coincide is very, very unfortunate for bus customers.
“We’ve worked with the council to do our best to come up with a diversion for the North Street works that will only affect the stops on that road to minimise disruption to our customers but, delays caused by the Lewes Road work – which are completely outside our control – are inevitable and we’re extremely sorry to say these will affect our customers.”
The bus company said: “From Monday 18 September buses travelling eastbound will travel around North Street via West Street and the coast road and will either continue along the coast road or pick up its normal route via the Old Steine. Westbound traffic will do the same in reverse.
“Suspension notices will be displayed on North Street bus stops and the real-time information boards will point customers to their nearest stops.
“Staff will be available at our Churchill Square information point to help as well as sporadically at North Street and we’ll be monitoring the traffic situation at the Elm Grove / Lewes Road junction.”
Southern Water replaced the old Victorian water mains in North Street 10 years ago along a 400-metre stretch but the reinstatement of the road proved poor.
The company aims to have the work that is about to start completed by the middle of November.
Southern’s senior project manager David Winterburn said: “We will be completing the work in sections to try to minimise impact on businesses and residents.
“All work will be in the carriageway and we ask pedestrians to use the designated footpaths and crossings.
“While we recognise the work may cause some temporary disruption, our priority is to keep this disruption to a minimum by carrying out the necessary work as quickly and effectively as we can.
“These repairs have been carefully timetabled to fit with other construction projects and road works taking place locally.”
The company said: “There is a dedicated web page which will be regularly updated with progress reports at www.southernwater.co.uk/northstreet.”
Very concerned about the “suginifucabt set” in 3rd para. Will that affect the number 5 to Patcham?
Well spotted. The perils of predictive text when using my phone to write about what’s happening. Corrected now.
Every year, as soon as all the summer tourist have left, we have major transport upheavals in the city. It’s just one of the periodic events that make the place so quirky, in the same way as the Brighton Festival, bin strikes, Pride, the Burning of the Clocks, and Katie Price’s evermore desperate publicity stunts.
We can but hope the work will be carried out PROPERLY for once. Too many sections of road have patches on top of patches because of repeated shoddy workmanship. It would be cheaper in the long run to make good quality repairs than have to keep coming back to fix problems that shouldn’t have arisen in the first place.
Try employing people who know what they’re doing, rather than going for the cheapest every time.