Gap at fatal crash site to be closed

FELIXSTOWE: A central reservation gap where a pensioner was killed in a car crash is set to be closed - ten years after the move was first agreed.

Had the gap at Trinity Avenue dual carriageway outside Dock Gate Two at Felixstowe been closed when approval was given back in 1999, motorist Terrence Warham, 80, would never have died.

Mr Warham, of Cardinals Court, Felixstowe, was killed in summer 2003 when he mistakenly pulled out of the wrong exit at the Anzani filling station to make an illegal right-turn through the gap and was in collision with a lorry.

The gap should have been closed by then but had been delayed by objections, and has remained open since with lorry and car drivers every week doing risky U-turns to switch back to the port.

Now county highways chiefs are insisting the gap is closed if proposals go ahead to enlarge the lorry park attached to the garage.

Officers want lorry park developers Motor Fuel Group Plc to pay �15,000 to close the gap as there is now an alternative access for vehicles to leave the site and travel back to the port via the traffic lights at the Blofield Road/Trinity Avenue junction.

“Without such an improved routing arrangement, we would recommend refusal of the application on the grounds of safety concerns that the highway authority would have over the increased use of the central gap, when also bearing in mind the increase in traffic on Trinity Avenue likely to be generated by the proposed expansion of Felixstowe docks,” officers told Suffolk Coastal council.

District councillors meet on November 12 to decide the issue and are recommended to approve the scheme to extend the lorry park - adding 1,995 sq m hard-standing to increase the number of spaces from 30 to 47, plus parking for truckers' cars - as long as the developers agree to close the gap.

Should the gap be closed? Write to Your Letters, Evening Star, 30 Lower Brook Street, Ipswich, IP4 1AN, or e-mail eveningstarletters@eveningstar.co.uk