THOUSANDS of bus passengers will face delays for another week as Thames Water works to fix a broken sewer pipe.

Both of Oxford’s bus companies have said the closure of Queen Street has caused huge delays so far.

The road was originally closed on Wednesday for three days, but workers yesterday said that the “silty soil” underneath the street had meant they have to dig deeper than anticipated.

But Oxford Bus Company’s operations director Phil Southall said: “We understand that the work needs to be done but we can’t empathise enough the disruption that the closure has caused.

“It’s not just the services that use Queen Street that are affected. It has a major knock effect on all the traffic in the city centre. We are doing our best to cope, we have extra supervisors on duty and extra buses running wherever possible to ease the delays.

“But it’s not just about buses; 50,000 people a week, on our services alone, are having their journeys disrupted. At times, instead of a couple of minutes on Queen Street, it’s taking between 20 minutes and half an hour to negotiate the diversion.

“Some passengers are facing lengthy walks to get to the replacement bus stops.”

The firms have been in discussions with the county council about moving some of the bus stops.

Stagecoach spokeswoman Karen Coventry said: “We would like to apologise to our customers for the late running of services and additional distance people are having to walk to catch the bus.”

A total of 17 bus services from both companies have been affected, with buses diverted and some stops no longer in use.

Earlier this year, traffic through Oxford was brought to a halt when Thames Water closed part of Frideswide Square to extract a “fatberg” – a build-up of cooking oil and fat and other rubbish flushed down the drains that had caused the sewer to collapse.

Thames Water’s Ian Smith said: “We’re sorry for the disruption our work is causing but this is must-do job.

“If the broken pipe is left then we’ll see nasty sewage spilling out of manholes in the road and street and backing up into nearby businesses. We simply can’t allow that to happen.

“We’ll be working extended hours to get finished as quickly as we can.”

The company has said pedestrian access to Queen Street will not be affected and that it has arranged for work – which was originally taking place at night – to be carried out during the day.

Work is set to finish by Monday, September 22.

The county council plans to eventually close Queen Street to buses as part of the £400m Westgate redevelopment.

 

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