Canwick Road completion: Another Lincoln growth ‘jigsaw’ piece

Road closures, congestion and flooding issues are promised to be a thing of the past as Lincolnshire County Council marked the reopening of Canwick Road.

The £5 million Canwick Road scheme was declared open on June 1, after five months.

Council representatives and special guests met at the Canwick Road junction with South Park Avenue on Friday, June 5 in order to cut the ribbon and announce the road works’ completion.

(L-R) Executive County Councillor for Transport Richard Davies, Lincoln MP Karl McCartney and Special Projects Manager Alan Airstrip cutting the ribbon and opening Canwick Road.

Work has been carried out to ease congestion by introducing wider lanes along Canwick Road and on the approaches to the South Park Avenue junction, dedicated turning lanes and improved junction layouts.

However, lane closures will continue at off-peak times until the end of June to allow for continuing landscaping, work on footpaths and a new subway at the junction with South Park Avenue.

The new subway is being finished with a coat of graffiti-repelant paint and lighting is being installed.

In the days since the road was reopened, motorists said they were unconvinced by the changes, taking to social media to complain about the amount still to be completed and the effectiveness of the layout changes.

Council representatives and guests marked the completion of the project.

Alan Aistrup, Special Projects Manager at Lincolnshire County Council, said: “This project is another piece in the jigsaw on growing Lincoln’s growth and prosperity.

“After a lot of hard work in thefts few weeks, we managed to reopen the road on Monday ready for all the wonderful events that are going to happen over the next few months.”

Richard Davies, Executive Member for Highways and Transportation at Lincolnshire County Council, added: “People are anecdotally saying how much better it is to get in and out of Lincoln at those key times.

“There’s also been a lot of flood prevention work and improvements on a number of levels.

“You can’t work on a busy congested road and make improvements without making disturbance and I’m sorry for people who have been inconvenienced, however this is probably the busiest stretch of road in Lincoln and it was always going to be a side effect that there would be some problems.”

Lincoln’s MP Karl McCartney also attended the opening ceremony.

He said: “I’m very pleased to see that the work has come to fruition and been completed.

“The pain has been worth it. We can see today, since the new scheme has been in operation since the start of the week, the traffic has been flowing a lot easier than it has previously.”