Sunday 8th March sees the first of 3 Chester road races (10k, half, and full marathon) requiring a number of road closures in and around the city centre.
I’ve created a new MTE and post in the MTE forum, but will need a L4+ editor to enter the closures.
The council TRO has full details of all roads being closed, the race site has maps and comprehensive information.
Many thanks
Closures added, taking note of your comments in the MTE post regarding the New Crane Street section…
Thanks Chris, that looks really good, two queries:
Closing Parkgate Rd out that far also blocks off all of Saughall from leaving via Long Ln (or anyone trying to get to Sealand Rd around the back of Mollington via Saughall).
I am sure this is an error, and the segments highlighted on A540 Parkgate Rd beyond Old Townfield Ln should have their closures removed.
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Chance to use new feature to close off nodes?
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The whole junction between Canal St and Upper Northgate St, I believe should be closed off while Canal St is closed 9:00-11:30, to prevent anyone being directed west along George St and north to the roundabout.
I realise the closures could have explicitly listed George St, and it’s possible that towards the end they would allow cars to make that turn (especially once Canal St is open again) but certainly during the earlier stages of the race George St will be blocked by spectators and the junction full of runners.
(I guess the reason the node wasn’t closed automatically is because it is between two separate closures with separate times. if not a bug then this is a problem to watch for in future)
thanks again for entering all this, hopefully I’ll get my MTE alert from the app shortly!
Thanks for checking things over. I suspect the A540 may be a “soft closure” - i.e. signed as closed at the A494 junction to deter drivers from heading onto the A540 there only to then be faced with the hard closure further to the south. As you say, having it all fully closed off would make life difficult for the locals on either side of the road, as well as making it impossible for them to follow the suggested diversion routes to get from Mollington to Saughall…
So I’ve cut that one back to just north of the Old Townfield Lane junction, except that I’ve left it marked as closed southbound at the A494 based on my soft closure suspicions - I’d prefer to err on the side of caution and have Waze not attempt to route anyone down there if it has been signed as closed there, and given the short duration of the closure if I’m wrong then it shouldn’t cause too much trouble.
Indeed, the lack of a node closure at the Canal St/Upper Northgate St junction is because they’re two different closures. I’ve now added an additional closure on the George St segment which will keep Wazers away from that junction whilst the “official” closures are active.
thanks for fixing up those two, and that makes sense about the “soft” closure thinking.
one final niggle, there’s a couple of segments missing their closure on A548 Lower Watergate St
Permalink that includes a segment that does have the closure set, I believe it’s easy to then copy to all 3 segments?
I only marked the eastern-most segment there in order to match the description in the TRO where it refers to preventing entry into Lower Watergate Street from the St Martins Way junction, but not to a full closure of the entire road. As this section of road doesn’t form part of the route but is close to it, I can see why preventing traffic from heading towards the route along here would be a good idea, but preventing traffic from
I’ve extended the westbound closure one segment to prevent any risk of rat-running up Nicholas Street Mews onto Stanley Street via that segment, but left it open in the eastbound direction as per the TRO.
Do you have local knowledge of the entire road being closed in both directions contrary to the TRO for previous races?
Yes, that extra segment should stop anyone diving down Nicholas Street Mews.
One.network shows the whole length of Lower Watergate St closed off, sometimes I wonder if that’s a more reliable source than the typed-up TRO (in the past I’ve even seen TROs with a screenshot from roadworks.org attached, as the definitive record).
The 10k race route is new for this year, though it does share the Marathon start from last October – but I can’t comment on any precise traffic restrictions then as I was only focussed on making it to the finish line!
Thanks again Chris for taking care of all this