Rush hour in Bishop’s Stortford on Monday morning saw gridlock in the town and some students 45 minutes late for school – largely as a result of two sets of temporary four-way traffic signals a few hundred yards apart.

The director of a coach company charged with ferrying students to and from schools in the town spoke to the Indie about the chaos caused by a combination of road works at key junctions and an accident along Thorley Street.

Viv Wyatt, director of Anita’s Coach and Minibus Hire, said her drivers had faced a “horrendous” situation, with some Herts and Essex High School students having to disembark from their bus in Dunmow Road in order to get to school in Warwick Road for exams.

“One of our school runs ran 20 minutes late, but even though it left Thorley at 8am it didn't get to Birchwood [High School] until 8.40am,” said Viv.

“Then it had to drop off on Dunmow Road outside Hockerill [Anglo-European College] but sat in traffic for so long that the [Herts & Essex] girls got off at the Nags Head and walked the rest of the way as some of them had exams.

“That coach was supposed to pick up at Thorley at 8.05am, but we had to get one of the others that had cleared theirs to shoot round the bypass into Thorley as that appeared to be quicker than tackling Hockerill and red bridge [the mini-roundabout junction of London Road and Hallingbury Road]. That coach never got to them until 8.45am.”

The gridlock was mainly caused by temporary four-way traffic signals at both the Hockerill junction – Hockerill Street, Stansted Road, Dunmow Road and London Road – and the ‘red bridge’ mini-roundabout junction of London Road, Hallingbury Road and Crescent Road.

Viv slammed the decision to allow both sets of works simultaneously as “ridiculous”.

Hertfordshire Highways also reported on X (formerly Twitter) that there had been a road traffic collision on Thorley Street.

Commenting on the Bishop’s Stortford Civic Federation Facebook group, Alistair Cameron – who takes three children to school: two to secondary and one to primary – said that he “abandoned” his usual route from Little Hallingbury and ended up dropping off two of the children at Spellbrook to walk to The Bishop’s Stortford High School in London Road. He then had to park in Thorley to walk the third child to primary school.

“Just a mad morning caused by ridiculous overuse of temporary traffic lights, which has caused tempers flaring and has clearly caused accidents on the slippery roads today too,” he said.

And a mum of three revealed it took her 70 minutes to cross town from Stortford Fields to Parsonage, with her two oldest children being 25 minutes late for their primary school.

One woman posted that although she was able to walk to work in the town, she was embarrassed that her colleagues travelling from Witham and Braintree spent most of their journey queuing to get into Stortford.

Besides the rash of road works in town, the scheme to “upgrade” junction 8 of the M11 and the A120 Birchanger roundabout – the “bulk” of which was due to finish at the end of last year – added to the chaos. Traffic queued from the old Birchanger roundabout junction back to Stansted Road – and the B1383 in Stansted Mountfitchet is also closed for works by Affinity Water.

A spokesperson for Hertfordshire County Council told the Indie on Monday afternoon the road works at the Hockerill junction overran but the lights were taken away on Monday morning.

The spokesperson added UK Power Networks was repairing a supply fault in Pig Lane which would be completed on Thursday (Jan 18) and was also carrying out emergency safety works at the ‘red bridge’ junction of London Road and Hallingbury Road following a traffic collision. This is also planned to be completed on Thursday.