South Yorkshire Times, January 27th, 1933

Mexborough’s Traffic Problem

The Solution

Last week we published a photograph showing a typical traffic “jam” in High Street, Mexboro ‘a thoroughfare which has become inadequate to deal with the huge increase of traffic passing through the town.

We now publish a photograph of a plan prepared by Mr. G. Fenwick Carter, surveyor to the Mexboro’ Urban District Council, showing the Council’s scheme for dealing with this problem by the construction of an avoiding road.

The Sheffield and South Yorkshire canal, which bounds the town on the south, is shown in the foreground of the plan, and immediately beyond, and parallel with it, is the proposed avoiding road, extending from Station Road on the right to Swinton Road on the left, with provision for further extension into Bank Street on the right and Main Street on the left, via Hartley Street.

The proposed road has a uniform width of fifty feet, and could be constructed with a minimum of disturbance of existing property. It would be necessary to set back the garage of the Yorkshire Traction Company, to take down a row of cottages in Foundry Lane, and to demolish one or two derelict buildings. The road would pass over land belonging to Captain F. J. O. Montagu (leased by Tuby’s executor for use as a fairground); the Mexboro’ Development Company and the London Glass Bottle Company, who, between them, own the original site of Barron’s Glass Works; and the executors of Peter Waddington and Son, Ltd., the owners of the other glass bottle works, both unhappily defunct, though Waddington’s works are capable of being brought into production again.

The effect of the proposed avoiding road would be to relieve Swinton Road and High Street of an enormous volume of heavy traffic, principally ‘bus traffic, which now passes through the main thoroughfares with daily increasing difficulty and danger. Among other advantages, the scheme opens up new sites for development and provides convenient centres for the marshalling and stationing of ‘bus traffic. A splendid ‘bus station and car park could be provided along the new route.

A development of the scheme which the Council has in mind is the extension of the new road through the present Market Hall into Bank Street, and this would involve the demolition of the bank buildings and the reconstruction’ of the market hail, perhaps as part of a town ball scheme, on the line of the new road, probably at its eastern end, near its junction with Station Road. At the other end the surveyor, in drawing the plan, has had in view the possibility of carrying the new road forward through Hartley Street (trumpet-mouthed at both ends) into Main Street, and by that means collecting and diverting through traffic from the Barnsley as well as the Rotherham and Sheffield direction.

It is hoped to interest the West Riding County Council, the authority primarily responsible for dealing with the problem, in this scheme. The County Council recently had under contemplation a scheme the direct widening of High Street. But owing to the economy order that scheme is in abeyance and unlikely to be revived. The estimated cost of the avoiding road is less than a tenth of the probable cost of the widening of High Street.