A BELATED call for contractors to work at night on any future major roadworks on the A39 near Minehead has been made by a Somerset councillor.

Cllr Marcus Kravis, who represents the Dunster division, was speaking after three months of disruption for motorists while his council replaced ageing traffic lights at the Dunster Steep junction.

The Free Press reported last week how traffic chaos caused by the project had resulted in Dunster traders losing up to half of their usual takings and visitor footfall in the village had fallen to an all-time low.

Now, Cllr Kravis has called for the council to use less disruptive methods going forward and hoped lessons had been learned.

Cllr Kravis said: “It is a relief that it is finished, not just for myself as the local councillor, but for every person who lives in West Somerset and travels to and from Minehead.

“Around 80 per cent of the phone calls and emails I have dealt with recently has been related to this issue.

“I am here as a representative for the people who live in my division, and I was fielding questions about it all the time, people were asking ‘what is going on?’.

“Every time you think you had solved the problem, all of a sudden there would be another 40 or 50-minute tailback of delay, with people missing appointments.

“Only last Tuesday somebody missed a physiotherapy appointment, because they thought it would be a 20-minute delay and for some reason it was a 40-minute delay.”

Cllr Kravis, who had criticised the project earlier in the year, said it had become ‘increasingly difficult’ to defend the council’s approach.

He said: “There are plenty of delivery businesses in the area, whether they are delivering plant and hire equipment or heating oil.

“If they suddenly do not know how long it is going to take them to take from Minehead to, say, Washford, the whole system gets disrupted, and it was incredibly disruptive for a significant period of time.

“People literally had to change their lives to work around what was going on here.”

Future projects could include an extension to Carhampton of the Minehead to Dunster A39 cycleway, the first phase of which caused even worse traffic issues three years ago.

Cllr Kravis said: “I will defend the cyclepath to my dying breath, I think that is a great piece of infrastructure, and in the end we got it right with the construction.

“But, lessons have to be learned.

“I think there has to be a look at nighttime working when work is done on this stretch of the road.

“We have to look at building nighttime working into our budgets.

“There is going to be a bit of thinking outside the box.”

“I would love to see the rest of the cyclepath finished, going to Carhampton.

“We have not stopped fighting for completion of that cyclepath.

“It seems silly to have half a cyclepath, but we have to be able to deliver without causing chaos and disruption to everybody’s lives.”