Councillors have hit out over a lack of communication after emergency works left Dumbarton gridlocked.
Traffic was brought to a standstill on the A82 and Glasgow Road two weeks ago after two separate sets of emergency works were carried out at the same time.
Contractors working on behalf of Openreach were drafted in to repair a collapsed underground chamber, with one lane closed in each side of the dual carriageway.
Meanwhile Scottish Gas Network (SGN) were carrying out works in Dumbarton East.
Speaking at an infrastructure, regeneration and economic development committee meeting last week, Labour councillor David McBride said he was unaware that the roadworks were taking place until receiving complaints and called for better communication.
He commented: “There has been a significant amount of roadworks that will clearly cause some frustration for users but it’s the emergency roadworks that cause the biggest.
“Last Thursday in Dumbarton, it was absolute gridlock and it was because on the A82, [Openreach] were doing emergency works and on Glasgow Road Scottish Gas Network were doing emergency works.
“Do we review afterwards to ensure was it an emergency? Could it have been handled any better? And a huge plea for communication because there’s nothing more frustrating for people and they get angry and they phone their local councillor.
“Their local councillor hasn’t been out on the road and doesn’t know about it and people find that really strange.
“So local councillors need to be made aware of this. It has to be on Facebook to let people know about it and I think when it’s not the council’s fault, we should at least tell people it’s not the council’s fault because they are getting the blame of it.”
In response, Gail Macfarlane, chief officer of roads and neighbourhoods, said fines could be issued to companies carrying out last minute roadworks across the area if they aren’t deemed to be emergencies.
However, no suggestion was made that the work carried out was not of an emergency nature.
Ms Macfarlane said: “In relation to assessing whether it was emergency works, we do question that.
“With urgent works there should be a five-day notice. That’s the absolute minimum. That allows us to do that local communication to local members. That allows us to do communications on Facebook and other social media.
“When it comes in as an emergency, that really makes it very difficult for us to be able to get that communication out so we do move for that as quickly as we can.
“Because it’s been seen as an opportunity if you haven’t put those notifications in place in appropriate timing to just go and do that work because you’ve got a squad available, we’re looking to sort of make it very clear that we’re going to be assessing whether that was an emergency.
“And if it wasn’t an emergency, we’ll be issuing a penalty charge notice and those get noted against any of those statutory undertakers.
“We do an annual report to the roadworks commissioner. If one of the undertakers has a number of penalty charge notices, they could get fined by the roadworks commissioner or asked to be put on an improvement plan.
“We know that that’s really quite serious. It runs the risk of a further fine as well.
“Part of what we’re wanting to do is to improve behaviour and improve that notification process.”
Councillor Michelle McGinty said those using public transport were also affected, with many people using buses unable to get past Dumbarton.
Speaking at the meeting last Wednesday, she said: “Most people are relying on public transport to get to work and I know last night the trains were all cancelled so there wasn’t a single train coming to West Dunbartonshire.
“There were queues for two hours at the bus stops in Clydebank for people because the buses were so overflowing and then the buses were stopping in Dumbarton and not even going to Alexandria because they were so delayed.
“They were refusing to even attempt to go through the roadworks.
“Last week even trying to get from Dumbarton to Alexandria, people were waiting 45 minutes. And that’s before the roadworks in Alexandria. That’s a real worry when you’ve got people stranded in Clydebank and Glasgow that can’t get home and you’ve got our bus network and train network refusing to go past Dumbarton.
“Young families and older people all stranded in the middle of Dumbarton with no way to get home.”
Waseem Hanif, spokesperson for gas distribution company SGN, said: "For the safety of road users we began work on Wednesday 26 October to replace a damaged manhole cover at the junction where Glasgow Road, Greenhead Road and Castlegreen Street meet. The noise from traffic passing over the cover was also creating significant disturbance for local residents.
"While we carried out our work and for everyone’s safety, we installed four-way traffic lights at the junction which were manually controlled during peak times to minimise disruption as much as possible. The temporary lights were removed when our work was completed on Friday 28 October."
