MOTORISTS faced miles of tailbacks and hours of delays on Wednesday as improvement works continued on a busy Newport roundabout.

Contractor Costain began work last year to completely revamp the Bassaleg, Tredegar Park and Pont Ebbw Roundabouts at an estimated cost of £13.7 million.

While the works are on target to be completed by late summer 2018, many drivers have spoken of disruption to journey times over the past few days.

On February 14, stop start traffic stretched along Cardiff Road, Lighthouse Road and the A48 leading up to the Tredegar Park roundabout.

Some motorists saw short journeys stretch to hour-long waits, while others mounted central reservations, performed u-turns or drove on pavements to escape static traffic.

Rebecca Boots - who travels from Malpas Road to Imperial Park every day - was caught up in the traffic jams and described it as “absolute chaos”.

“This morning we sat through nine changes of traffic lights coming off the M4 Westbound down onto the roundabout due to the traffic backing up from the docks road and inconsiderate drivers not leaving the entrance onto the roundabout clear,” she said.

“It is taking around an hour currently to do a nine minute journey home.”

After getting his regular bus from Cardiff at 8.10am, Stewart Palmer also made it to junction 28 at around 9.15am but more than two hours later, he still hadn’t made it work at Sticky Ink Studios.

Aimee Hibberd, of Sticky Ink Studios, said: “As a business with only the two of us this is greatly affecting our company on a daily basis.”

Senior community relation manager for Costain, Brian Greaves, also commenting for Welsh Government, said a full review has been instigated into of light sequencing at Pont Ebbw roundabout with sub-contractors Siemens.

He added that Costain will be liaising with Gwent Police with a view to “preventing future incidents or delays” following the “significant increase” in traffic using the Southern Distributor Road and the Duffryn link.

On Wednesday, one driver said it took him 20 minutes to travel from the traffic lights at the bottom of Gaer hill, Newport - at the junction with Cardiff Road - to the Bideford Road junction - a distance of 200 metres.

Carolyn Jones also left Cardiff at 8.10am to travel to work in Newport and by 9.55am she was by the Office for National Statistics in Newport, still trying to complete her journey.

“The new road layout is not working," she said.

"This cannot continue. It’s a terrible advert for Newport."

Abigail Hawthorne-Bennett commutes daily to St Mellons from Newport by bus and said as there are no alternative routes or train routes, “putting up with these extremely long delays” is her “only option”.

Mr Greaves, commenting for Costain and Welsh Government, said a traffic management team reviewed light sequencing after reports of traffic hold-ups at Pont Ebbw Roundabout as early as 7.30am.

“I would stress that we were not undertaking any work activity at that time under lane closures as work activity requiring lane closures is only permitted after 9.30am," he said.

“With regard to similar traffic congestion issues over the past few days, we can confirm that there were a several road traffic collisions on the Newport highway network during the peak morning traffic movements that have seriously contributed to congestion within the confines of the M4 J28 project works area.”

The aim of the works is to increase the amount of traffic that can travel through these roundabouts and reduce delays on the M4, A48, A467 and SDR and improve safety on these junctions.

For more, visit: beta.gov.wales/m4-junction-28 and for the schedule of works and diversion routes, visit: www.newport.gov.uk