Cable repairs cause traffic chaos for Wolverhampton
Drivers are being met with lengthy tailbacks due to work to repair underground phone cables on a main road heading into Wolverhampton.
Workers from BT moved on to the A449 Penn Road on Monday morning and started digging up the carriageway in a bid to find a fault that has led to hundreds of businesses and households being cut off from phone lines for more than a week.
The work is centred on a 200-metre stretch of the road between its junctions with Witton Road and Rookery Lane in Goldthorn Hill, blocking all traffic heading into the city.
On Monday, Goldthorn Hill was also blocked off, causing long queues of traffic in neighbouring roads as motorists sought out alternative routes. Traffic snaked more than half a mile down Coalway Road during the evening rush hour, while drivers heading into the city were faced with a long diversion along Warstones Road at the junction with Stourbridge Road.
Many drivers are performing u-turns as they heade towards the roadworks.
Business owners in the area have reported a drop in trade since the work started, with some unhappy about the lack of notice given by BT.
Baldeep Gabri, who runs Penn Framing near to the roadworks on Penn Road, said he did not find out about the disruption until he arrived at work on Monday.
He said: "It's frustrating that I wasn't told about this. It is causing a lot of problems. If they had told us in advance then I would have been able to tell customers to come another day.
"Instead I have had people turning around and going home once they see how bad the traffic is."
Rob Lester said his Three Tiers cake making firm had suffered a 'huge fall' in trade as a result of the work.
More than 150 businesses and residents in the Penn area have been without phone lines for more than a week as a result of the fault.
Kathy Barton, receptionist at the Wolverhampton Homeopathic Clinic on Coalway Road, said appointments at the clinic had dropped dramatically since phone lines went down at the start of the month.
"It has had a massive impact on us because none of our patients have been able to get through," she said.
"Eventually they just get fed up and go elsewhere."
Bosses at BT say the job is expected to last for two weeks.
