00:00a birthday here in swanscombe that no one wants to celebrate back in 2023 the town's main a road
00:08partially collapsed after a burst pipe caused a landslip leaving a vital cut through between
00:15dartford and gravesend out of action three years later all the signs indicate that misery is not
00:23letting up any time soon try and go anywhere in and out of swanscombe the morning it completely
00:30gridlocked and evening completely gridlocked by now it's three years on we should have at least a
00:35plan but there is no plan as far as i can tell with galley hill road still closed the town's
00:41narrow
00:41streets have become a rat run for heavy lorries and commuter traffic which is causing chaos in the
00:48town centre the traffic here is a bottleneck and it's all day every day you've got traffic
00:56especially in the evenings you make the appointments and they're turning up 20 minutes half an hour later
01:03we get clients phone and they're saying i'm driving around where can we park get lorries come down the
01:09road and they get blocked and they have to reverse and go all the way back so it's a nightmare
01:14especially
01:15at peak times our deliveries are taking so much longer to get to our clients um yeah it's just
01:22really bad i mean it's three years too long solutions to the road closure are few and far between
01:30with two options on the table to reopen galley hill road the first is to build a bridge spanning the
01:37affected area while the second is to reinforce the chalk spine the road was built on in the
01:44first place but either option will cost tens of millions of pounds and patience here is wearing
01:53thin it's appalling situation it takes a mental toll on everybody and people do feel abandoned that's the
02:01feedback that i'm getting they're abandoned and no one cares kent county council says they're working
02:07to mitigate traffic impacts in the area and are working on solutions to reopen the road when it's safe to
02:14do so but with no end in sight this is an anniversary that will be commiserated on for years to
02:22come
02:22ollie leader on galley hill road
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