A BUSY Hereford A-road has won the crown for the longest delays in the county for the last five years.

Figures from the Department of Transport show that the A438, which runs from Bronllys in Powys across the width of Herefordshire to Tewkesbury, consistently has the highest average vehicle delay among the county’s locally managed A-roads.

The A438 showed an average delay of 29.7 seconds per mile in the 2019-2023 period. The figure for last year was 28.6 seconds.

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A Local Democracy Reporter Service trial (see video) found it took 16 minutes to travel the 4.5 miles from the city boundaries at Conifer Walk in the west to the Cock of Tupsley pub in the east shortly before 9am.

This compared with a Google estimate of 12 minutes for the same trip in the middle of the night – suggesting a delay caused by daytime traffic of around a minute a mile.

Second in the table was the A465, which runs from the south of Hereford to Pontrilas before continuing on to Neath in south Wales, which showed an average delay of 25.7 seconds per mile.

Concerns have been expressed that with planning permission granted for a new Lidl supermarket in place of the current Three Counties Hotel on the Belmont Road section of the A465, this will add to congestion here.

The figures show a broad continuity in the delay figures over the past five years, with the A438 and A465 consistently in first and second place over the period (see graph).

The figures do not include the A49, the county’s main north-south artery, which is managed separately by National Highways.