Saturday August 22 was a bad day for Windsor in terms of traffic congestion.   Imperial Road residents experienced queues from shortly after 9 am and at 11.45 am there were still queues on the Royal Windsor Way right back to the motorway so Imperial Road residents must have suffered over three hours of queues.  In the evening Winkfield Road was still a solid queue of traffic past 10pm.   So what action was taken to ensure there wasn’t a repeat?   Legoland put out warnings to visitors that they could be turned away over the Bank Holiday weekend if they hadn’t prebooked.   The Highways Agency were geared up to notify drivers if this happened.  Did this work?   On Friday August 28 traffic congestion was terrible again with traffic heading for Windsor queuing right back to Ascot Racecourse. As a consequence Legoland shut its doors, the first time I believe for several years.   Visitors I guess had taken heed of the warnings that the Bank Holiday weekend could prove busy and decided to come on the Friday.    Not only is this traffic congestion bad for residents but it impacts badly on visitors’ experience of Windsor.

Last Summer you may recall the experiments of new routes to Legoland to try and reduce the traffic congestion caused by arriving traffic on Imperial Road and the Royal Windsor Way and by departing traffic on Winkfield Road.   Importantly they were required by the Highways Agency to prevent queues stacking on the M4.  These have now been implemented.

The difference is that traffic from the M25 from the South is being directed via Old Windsor/Windsor Great Park (previously was directed to the M4).  Traffic arriving from J6 of the M4 along the Royal Windsor Way is directed along Goslar Way to approach via Windsor Great Park.  Departing traffic is directed to turn right out of Legoland Park.

So how successful have these experiments proved to be?

Imperial Road residents are still finding a solid queue on peak day mornings with queues on the Royal Windsor Way still stretch back to the motorway junction.   Residents in Winkfield Road have experienced queues of traffic for five hours when the Legoland exiting traffic is overlaid onto the late afternoon rush hour traffic.  When you add the morning rush hour traffic Winkfield Road residents face six hours of queues at peak times.

So why hasn’t it been a success?   Well, seasoned visitors returning to Legoland know their “normal route” and stick to this.  Most drivers use SatNavs and these direct drivers along the shorter but congested routes.   Visitors on social media are informing each other to avoid the new routes and take the old ones.   Legoland staff no longer (at the time of writing) stand at the exit waving placards encouraging visitors to turn right.   There appears to have been a big promotional campaign to attract visitors to Legoland at peak times which I guess will have increased visitors.  Judging by the usage of the overflow car parks this appears to be the case.

We have a new lead Councillor for Highways, Colin Rayner.   He is treating the problem of traffic congestion with the seriousness it deserves and is seeking new short-term and long-term solutions.  One of the short-term solutions, which he admitted was a “sticky plaster job”, has been to experiment with manually controlling the two sets of lights at the Imperial Road/Clewer Hill junction (which you may recall is an Air Pollution hotspot).   With the data collected he is organising a Public Consultation in October/November to propose three different schemes at this junction.    He has said “These plans would tide us over for the years until we get pinch point funding.   We’ve got to do something for the junction, the residents have suffered enough”.   He said that the bus stop lanes would be reinstated in Imperial Road, but to the best of my knowledge there have never been bus stop lanes in Imperial Road and buses do not use this road, so I am unsure what he means.

The pinch point funding is a multi-million pound bid for a grant to the Government “to ease the burden on Windsor link roads to Legoland”.

Details of the Public Consultation, when available, will be posted on this website.

I understand that discussions continue to explore an additional entry/exit point to relieve the congestion along the Winkfield Road and those that feed onto it.