I recently reported that Manchester Urban Traffic Control (who manage the main junctions around Greater Manchester) had agreed to change the phasing of the lights at the Kingsway/Gatley Road junction.

They’d been away and done a stack of computer modelling, looking at every permutation in changing the lights, putting in right filters and changes different parts of sequenc.

Manchester UTC told us that a right filter wasn’t viable, and other options either wouldn’t help east-west traffic, or would have a knock-on effect to north-south traffic.

The most promising option looked to be changing the phase from three minutes to two.  I wrote in more detail about what it would mean and how it should help here.

Although they’d done all the modelling and we’d been promised the change would be made in late January or early February, I checked a little while ago (standing at the junction and timing the phase) and confirmed nothing had been done.

On enquiring, we were told that they’d gone to the junction to make the change, got worried at the last minute about the effect on traffic backing onto the M60 and decided not to do it after all!

To say Mark Hunter and I were unimpressed would be something of an understatement.

The latest plan is for councillors to go down to the junction with Manchester UTC in rush hour, have them make the change and see what happens.  If traffic backs onto lane one of the M60, it can be reverted easily.  If it all goes OK, then we can see how it goes.

That should happen in the next few weeks, but it’s still be to confirmed with Manchester UTC when the relevant person comes off leave next week.

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