Deeper ditches 'a danger to drivers'

A COUNTRY lane has been branded as dangerous after its boundary ditches were dug out and marker posts were removed.

Residents believe the ditches along the stretch of Lye Lane in Bricket Wood, between West Riding and the motorway bridge, have been substantially deepened by Herts Highways during maintenance work.

Lye Lane resident Joan Rudkin maintains the road is now extremely dangerous for drivers and walkers alike and she said that Herts County Council told her that the marker posts bordering ditches they removed during work would not be replaced.

But she believes that even the original plastic marker posts would now be insufficient due to the new depth of the ditches and that concrete bollards were now required to protect drivers.

And she emphasised that in her 35 years living along the lane she had never seen the ditches full with water and hadn't noticed any flooding.

Mrs Rudkin has been calling for Lye Lane to be resurfaced for a number of years because of the high number of potholes along the road and although Herts Highways has now filled in the holes, she believes they have created an even worse danger to the lane in digging out the ditches.

She said: "Someone has been over zealous with the JCB. It is dangerous and someone is going to have a nasty accident. The road is hardly wide enough to take two cars. If I meet anything bigger than my car like a white van I just have to stop."

A spokesperson for Herts Highways said: "The ditches at the side of the road in Lye Lane are there to store water that flows off the road during flash floods. Routine maintenance to these ditches was recently carried out. This involved digging out any waste and vegetation that had gathered in the ditches so that their full capacity is available in the event of a flash flood."

But the spokesperson maintained that the black and white marker posts removed during the work would be replaced.