February 09

Freight Best Practice Meeting in March

The Merseyside and Halton Freight Quality Partnership are holding a meeting to hear about the Freight Best Practice Programme.  The meeting will be held on 9th March 09 at Merseytravel, Hatton Garden, Liverpool.  To regester for the meeting please fill in the form or contact Lee-Victoria Davies on 0151 934 4668. 

To register for the Merseyside and Halton FQP Themed Meeting - Freight Best Practice, please fil in the form below.

Contraflow for vital M57 Scheme

A £500,000 scheme to repair expansion joints on an M57 bridge at Kirkby in Merseyside is to get underway next week.

The work, which starts on Friday, February 6, will require a contraflow over three miles between junctions 3 and 6. But Highways Agency contractors are aiming to complete the project by Friday, March 27 - a week before the Grand National weekend at Aintree.

The bridge, at Knowsley Wood, crosses the A580 East Lancashire Road. The expansion joints on the southbound carriageway have failed and need to be replaced. 
The work will also require the northbound access slip at junction 4 to be closed for the whole of the project and the southbound exit slip at junction 4 to be closed sometime around Sunday, March 1 until the work is finished. Local diversions will be in place. 

The contraflow arrangement will vary throughout the project but there will be a constant 2m (6'6") width restriction southbound as well as a 50 mph speed restriction for the duration of the works. 

LGVs travelling southbound will need to leave the motorway at junction 5 and will be diverted to rejoin at junction 4 after the bridge. 

Contractors have also been asked to consider people living around the motorway. Work will be taking place under the cover of a tent to help reduce the noise of water jetting and machinery on the site will also be muffled and switched off when not in use.

Highways Agency Project Manager Andrew Olive said, "This scheme is a vital maintenance project to improve the safety of the bridge and reduce congestion caused by potential emergency repairs in this area in the future. Obviously there will be some inconvenience to road users and people living in the area but we will be working hard to minimise those."