Castle Street: Overnight closures still in place despite agency’s claim road is ‘fully open’
CLOSED: The Queen Street junction with the A63 last night
By Simon Bristow, Co-Editor
Key junctions on the A63 at Castle Street are still closed at night, despite National Highways declaring the £355m scheme “fully open” on Thursday.
The closures bar entry to the A63 to and from Queen Street to the south and to and from Lowgate to the north. Several cars were seen approaching the barriers in Lowgate last night and having to perform U-turns.
A sign at the Lowgate junction said closures would be in place from 8pm to 6am for “seven nights from March 23”. However, the closures will actually last until the end of April.
In a press release issued under embargo until Thursday, National Highways said: “A £355 million upgrade that will completely transform travel in Hull and boost the city’s economic growth has fully opened today (Thursday 26 March), following the latest major milestone.”
Thursday’s statement made no mention of continuing overnight closures, but said: “Following the opening of the underpass, engineers completed the connections of the entry and exit slip roads and Commercial Road to Ferensway, ready for the full opening by Thursday morning.”
The statement included a comment from Hull West and Haltemprice MP Emma Hardy, which said: “The completion of this project will come as a real relief to local residents and it’s great to see it finally opening.
NO ENTRY: The road closure in Lowgate
“People have put up with a lot of disruption for a long time, but I hope that as journeys become quicker and more reliable, they’ll feel that the wait has been worth it.”
The agency had previously announced the phased opening of the new underpass last weekend. This statement also said work on the junction between Ferensway / Commercial Road / A63 is “due for completion by the end of the month” [March], and that this would “mark the full completion of the scheme”.
Asked by The Hull Story if it had been misleading to say the scheme was “fully open” on Thursday, a Highways Agency spokesman said today: “It is very common when schemes of this size come to a conclusion that traffic management is put in place at some low-volume times, such as overnight, to complete smaller elements of the scheme.
“The underpass of the A63 has been open since last weekend, and the new junction at Mytongate was fully open to traffic from around 6am on Thursday morning.”
The scheme, which began six years ago, is Hull’s biggest and most expensive infrastructure project. It was due for completion in spring 2025 but was delayed by a year due to ground conditions “that could not have been anticipated before the scheme began”.
The list of full eastbound and westbound closures is:
Friday 27 March - “delayed westbound closure to 10.30pm for Hull KR Rugby fixture”
Monday 30 March to Wednesday 1 April
Tuesday 7 April to Friday 10 April
Monday 13 to Friday 17 April
Monday 20 to Friday 24 April
Monday 27 to Thursday 30 April - “Thursday delayed westbound closure to 10.30pm for Hull KR Rugby fixture”