Cooking oil closes M-way; Drivers delayed up to an hour.A LORRY carrying cooking oil caused massive tailbacks for commuters when it shed its load on the M53 motorway The M53 is a motorway in the Metropolitan Borough of Wirral and Cheshire on the Wirral Peninsula in England. It can also be referred to as the Mid Wirral Motorway. It is 20 miles (32 km) long and runs between Wallasey in the north and Chester. . The crash, which happened at 2pm yesterday, left the southbound carriageway carriageway Noun 1. Brit the part of a road along which traffic passes in one direction: the westbound carriageway of the M4 2. closed for more than five hours, while Highways Agency officers checked the damage and removed the wreckage. Nobody was hurt in the crash. The slick, originally thought to be diesel fuel, spread across the road between Junctions 7 and 8 at Ellesmere Port Ellesmere Port, town and district (1991 pop. 78,800), Cheshire, W central England. Ellesmere Port, located on the Manchester Ship Canal near its junction with the Shropshire Union Canal and the entrance into the Mersey estuary, is the principal town of the district. , leaving it extremely dangerous to drive on. Highways Agency officers closed the southbound carriageway as well as the Junction 7 slip road and put in a half hour diversion while they studied the road, which was thought for some time might need resurfacing. The northbound carriageway was unaffected. The M53 was reopened at around 7pm, by which time the delays had grown to over an hour. A Highways Agency spokesman said: "We have to assess the road to make sure it is safe for drivers before it can be reopened. "I cannot emphasise the importance of that enough." |
|
||||||||||||||||
Printer friendly
Cite/link
Email
Feedback
Reader Opinion