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£150,000 work heading to Himley Road traffic jam junction

A notorious junction will undergo £150,000 worth of improvements to combat jams, it has been revealed.

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New congestion-busting smart technology is to be installed at traffic lights around Himley Road and Bull Street in Lower Gornal.

It comes after an application for funding worth £90,000 by Dudley Council was approved at a meeting of the Black Country LEP executive joint committee on Wednesday.

The other £60,000 will come from the council. It is hoped the work will start later this year.

Councillor David Stanley, who represents the Gornal ward, said: "As far as I am concerned any improvements we can make on it the better.

"It is incredibly busy on the crossroads with a three-way traffic light switch at the moment.

"It can be very frustrating in the queues there and the traffic can build up right the way back to the Milking Bank island."

The busy junction is on B4176 Himley to Dudley Road where Bull Street and Redhall Road lead into Gornal.

Existing traffic lights will be ripped out, with new signals and detection equipment installed at the four-way junction.

New smart technology will monitor traffic levels and queues to make split-second decisions on how long each green light should stay on for.

Councillor Khurshid Ahmed, cabinet member for planning and economic development, said: "We welcome any opportunity to make junctions easier.

"It needs new signals but later we may need to do something further than that because there are housing developments taking shape around there – and that junction is key.

"We need to make it wider and bigger and will be exploring options similar to that of works on Shaw Road in Coseley. It will come down to funding. But new technology should help with the traffic flow."

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