We know the condition of our roads is something that’s hugely important to everyone around Reading – feedback through our residents surveys has made this very clear. That’s why we continue to invest in highways improvements to make travel around the borough as easy as possible for all road users.
You may have already seen that London Road wasresurfaced last week from Cholmeley Road to Cumberland Road, starting the next phase of resurfacing major roads in Reading.
We’ve also just resurfaced sections of two other main roads – Upper Redlands Road (from Elmhurst Road to Whiteknights Road) and Alexandra Road (from Addington Road to Upper Redlands Road) – which have finished this week.
With Reading Festival coming up this weekend, we’vepaused the programme to ensure there’s no additional disruption during the Festival. After that we will resumewith a second phase of improvements from the beginning of September when sections of a further ten major roads will be resurfaced. In fact, over two years 76 sections of main roads around Reading are scheduled to be improved for residents.
This £4.5m major roads programme forms part of anoverall £8m investment from Reading Borough Council investment that will also see us continue improvingresidential roads over five years, with around 100 more residential roads set to be resurfaced later this year.
The results of our substantial investment in an ambitious plan to make a big difference to the standard of Reading’s highways are clear to see. In 2022 we completed a £9m 3-year investment which saw over 700 residential roads resurfaced over three years. As a result, 80% of Reading’s residential roads are nowclassed as being in “good” condition, up from 35% before that improvement programme began in 2019.
The sections of road being improved under the major roads programme will inevitably see closures to ensure work can be carried out quickly and safely, and a temporary ‘no waiting at any time traffic order’ will be in place to prevent parking on the road while the works are being undertaken. We know that any such work involving closing a road causes disruption to residents, but the contractor will maintain access for residents where it is safe and possible.
The London Road work was coordinated with work to install a new inbound bus lane between Liverpool Road and Amity Road junctions, creating faster and even more reliable journeys for people travelling into town by bus. By synchronising these two pieces of work we’ve been able to minimise disruption to residents, especially as all work on this section has taken place under three nighttime closures so we didn’t affect daytime traffic in and out of Reading.
Our commitment to improving highways remains as strong as ever, and with ambitious plans to improve more major and residential roads, we’ll continue to make Reading’s highways more user-friendly for you.
