Relief for motorists as key city road is to reopen
THE Mancunian Way in Manchester is to reopen on June 15 after a £6m repair which started when a huge sinkhole appeared after heavy rain, causing major damage to a key sewer.
A contraflow section has been in force on the short section of the carriageway between London Road and Fairfield Road since the incident in August.
United Utilities has now completed the tunneling project to lay a new sewer and is carrying out further replacement highway drainage work and resurfacing on behalf of Manchester City Council.
As a final step before the reopening, the whole of the Mancunian Way will be closed on Monday and Tuesday June 13 and 14 for its annual maintenance inspection and to remove the contraflow system and repaint road markings.
It is an annual inspection closure which was scheduled to happen earlier this year but postponed while the repair work was still taking place to avoid further inconvenience to motorists.
Cllr Kate Chappell, executive member for Environment for Manchester City Council, said: “It’s great news that we have got a date for the reopening. We’d like to thank the public for bearing with us during this challenging work.
“As the damage affected a major sewer there was no alternative but for United Utilities to carry out this complex large-scale repair deep underground otherwise large parts of East Manchester would have been left without a functioning sewage system and the water supply to the city centre would have been cut off.
“It’s great news that United Utilities have carried out this difficult repair without disruption to water and sewage network and we appreciate all their hard work.”
Diversion routes for June 13 and 14 will be signposted.
The scale of the work makes this the biggest emergency sewer repair repair United Utilities has ever undertaken.
In total, 10,400 tonnes of sandstone has been excavated, rhe equivalent of 3,992 Olympic-sized swimming pools of sewage have been pumped past the roadworks. Some 400 metres of temporary pipework has been laid and three of the largest mobile pumps in the UK have been used – each one foot in diameter and capable of shifting 500 litres of wastewater a second, 24 hours a day.
