Government Figures have revealed 14,000 vehicles a day are using one road in Penrith as renewed calls have been made to create a new Penrith bypass linking the M6 and A66 to the East of Penrith after a weekend of gridlock around the town.
Penrith has faced weekly gridlock on the roads with Fridays and Mondays often the worst days. The weekend has seen some of the worst congestion on the town’s roads since the end of the pandemic caused through a mix of increased tourist traffic in the area, local events traffic, roadworks and some claim ongoing issues with traffic lights around the town leading to a weekend of gridlock on roads in and around Penrith.
Traffic data released recently by the department for transport shows that Penrith has seen a 2.2% increase in traffic passing along the town’s roads on an average daily basis with thousands of vehicles passing through and around the Penrith daily.
The Department for Transport carried out manual traffic monitoring on some of the town’s roads in late 2023 with monitoring carried out on main roads through and around Penrith including Brunswick Road, Middlegate, Bridge Lane, Cornmarket, Cromwell Road and Ullswater Road.
The released data gathered by the Department for Transport shows that on an average day 14,750 vehicles travel along Brunswick Road with 8668 vehicles passing through the town centre along Middlegate as a daily average.
On the outskirts of Penrith an average of 25000 vehicles a day are using junction 40 to exit and enter the M6 with most of those vehicles using the M6 North of junction 40.
The A66 between Kemplay Roundabout and J40 carries a daily average of 29169 vehicles around the southern edge of Penrith. Traffic on the A66 East of Kemplay roundabout has a daily average of 18061 vehicles and 8960 vehicles are using the A6 to enter and exit Kemplay Roundabout from Eamont Bridge.
A daily average of 9822 vehicles travels along the A6 and Scotland Road to the north of the town centre with a daily average of 6233 vehicles heading in and out of Penrith on the A6 between Pennyhill Park and Stoney Beck roundabout.
Following the congestion over the weekend calls have been renewed for the need to look at a new road linking between the A66 and M6 around Penrith as a permanent measure to address the worsening weekly congestion faced in and around Penrith.
Evolve Penrith has called on the new government and National Highways to not only commit the A66 upgrade but to look to create a new link road between the A66 and the M6 to the east of Penrith along the route proposed in the 2018 Penrith Masterplan to create a link between junction 41 and the A66 to address congestion in Penrith and on the M6 and A66 between junction 40 and Kemplay Roundabout.
A spokes Person for evolve Penrith said “Not only is the long-term creation of a new link road vital to help the town address congestion, reduce pollution from the thousands of vehicles gridlocked on the roads around Penrith with engines running going no were fast. But as the town inevitably grows with more and more housing this will bring more and more traffic onto the local roads adding to an already bad situation. That has an economic impact on Penrith. People will not want to visit if they can’t get near the town businesses will not want to locate to Penrith, if their logistics cannot get goods in and out due to congestion on the roads around the town. A new road is the only logical way to address the issues and help the towns economic future.”
“National Highways also need to look at the short-term measures to address weekly issues on Junction 40 and Kemplay Roundabout that all locally know is created by traffic lights that are way out of any resemblance of sequence. They either need to introduce smart lights that can work networked and respo9nsive to volumes of traffic or a quick fix option turn them off at peek times like is done in Carlisle around Hardwick circus. Enabling the roundabouts work as roundabouts and letting traffic flow.”
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