Wednesday, November 02, 2005

Flooding in Archers Road

There was serious flooding at the junction of Archers Road and Silverdale Road today, causing traffic chaos. Evetually the stretch of road was closed off and a vehicle was brought down from Poole to pump out the water. Although it is all sorted now, many drivers and residents were seriously inconvenienced and some stuck in rush hour traffic for an hour.

The problem is largely caused by the dip in the road at the junction.

I have written to the Council to see if there is anything that can be done about it, as this stretch of road is regularly prone to flooding problems.

Money from the flat developments on old Dell site is being used to resurface Howard Road and the Hill Lane end of Archers Road. I wonder if the Council could flatten road or widen the drains as part of this work.

I have also asked the Council to be more vigilant in clearing the leaves in the area. The area is covered with fallen leaves which no doubt block the drains to some extent and make any flooding worse.

The Council also needs to respond to situations like this much quicker. Local police were on the scene to direct traffic but the Council wasn't able to act for many hours.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Jeremy,

As a former resident of Silverdale Road, this junction always flooded when there was anything resembling serious rain... and has been a well know problem for at least 10 years.

The additional problem is that there is additional water entering the drain system from the soakaways from the Barratt development (the Dell site always suffered from poor drainage, hence while it was give to the football club) as the Posbrook stream is culverted under the road at that point.

Matt

Jeremy Moulton said...

Thanks Matt. Thats interesting. I'll fwd this on to the Council as they are looking into how they might improve the situation as part of the works they are planning for that section of Archers Road.

Jeremy

Anonymous said...

Apparently, the Dell site was originally bought by the railways to be a goods yard, but they could never solve the drainage problem, hence the 'gift' to the football club back in the early part of the 20th century.

Those problems continued for the football club too.... drainage was an issue for them too right up until the last few years before they left (they tried importing worms, 'sandslitting' amongst other solutions). I'm given to understand that Barratt had real problems on site regarding the nature of the drainage.

There is less drainage surface area to drain away now (as a result of the building on site) so it was always going to get worse - and it was bad to start off with !

I suspect that the real issue is the Posbrook culvert. The brook runs from the top of the common and is culverted from the Dell until it enters The Test.

Best of luck.

Matt