A NEW £5million road layout is going to cause crashes, according to the motorists using it.

Safety concerns have been raised after the busy Kent Elms junction of the A127 was reconfigured by Southend Council.

The Kent Elms junction, used by thousands of commuters every day, has a section before the traffic lights where it turns to three lanes, before merging into two again after the lights.

While this is common at many busy junctions it is the tiny distance before three lanes become two again which has been criticised on the Southend bound side.

Sam Carey, from Southend, said: “The new layout is the problem.

“Drivers in the middle lane panic and try to force their way over to the left lane instead of slowing down and filtering. I have been horrifically cut up by bad drivers a number of times.

“It should be two lanes for straight on and one lane turn left only.”

Lee Butler, who lives at the Kent Elms junction, said: “I regularly see people nearly hitting each other.

“Ultimately when lorries are going down there and there’s children walking home from school, you do worry about whether an HGV is going to end up on the pavement after swerving and trying to avoid hitting someone in the merge lane.”

Southend Council’s contractor, Eurovia, added the additional merger lane to the Southend-bound carriageway which they hoped would allow more vehicles to pass through each light sequence.

Tony Holland added: “The filter lane is too short in both directions. Every time the lights go green it comes to a standstill as there is no room.

“The junction is worse for hold-ups and accidents than it was before and the council ruined it by wasting our money.”

Lee Taylor, from Westcliff, said: “The problem is squeezing three lanes into two, with no distance to merge.

“I’ve witnessed countless accidents since the waste of money on the new road layout.”

Councillor Stephen Aylen admitted several people have complained to him.

He added: “The problem is two-fold. You’ve got people who don’t know how to use merge lanes and then it’s that there is not enough time to merge.

“People are confused and those drivers in the middle lane then get stuck with traffic on either side of them.

“Merge lanes work excellently elsewhere but there is a problem with the Kent Elms junctions.

“They are a relatively new concept to Southend drivers although there others in the borough.

“The London-bound side is just as bad. The layout is extremely confusing for motorists especially if you’re turning onto Eastwood Road North because there’s a bus stop which looks like a slip road and traffic then swerves back into the main road.”

Mr Aylen says he has raised the problem with council officers and the councillor responsible for infrastructure but nothing is being done.

He added: “I’m a design engineer and solve problems for a living but nobody seems to be trying to solve this problem.

“It might not be that it’s too short and there may be another way to solve it but nobody seems to be looking into it at the moment.

“I have been to various meetings and have asked for them to make the left-hand lane a left turn only and the other two lanes for straight-on traffic.

“That would take the pressure off the merge lanes after the traffic lights.

“It would be very simple and cheap to do - even just for a trial period - but they have said they can’t because it would have to involve health and safety teams.”

Southend Council said the merge lane’s length is within statutory guidelines and denied any safety concerns have been raised with them.

A spokesman for the council said: “The concept of lanes merging from three to two is well tested in Southend, and now features at our junctions at Progress Road, Cuckoo Corner and the Tesco roundabout.

“The distance in which the lanes merge is shorter at Kent Elms than at other junctions due to the availability of land.

“However, it follows statutory guidelines. It has been independently audited for road safety and no issues have been raised on the merge lane as a result of this audit.”