Herefordshire transport chief John Harrington hopes to solve Hereford’s congestion problem by turning it into a traffic light-free city.

The It’s Our County councillor made the remarks as the local authority unveiled the next stages of their review of major road schemes in the county.

Councillor Harrington put the plans for a city bypass and southern link road on hold and commissioned reports on the schemes after his group swooped to power last year with their Herefordshire Independents and Green Party coalition colleagues.

Now he says the administration at Plough Lane is also looking at alternatives should they decide to axe the road schemes – and among those is removing the signals along the A49. His plan for a switch off may have gained traction as drivers reported smoother commutes after the lights failed last Wednesday.

“The political ambition is that we would love a city, essentially, without traffic lights. If it works and if it is safe,” he said.

“We have had discussions with two senior officers at Highways England and they were very happy for us to go ahead and consider traffic light removal. They were happy to be a partner in that. What they’ve said is they would need to be involved in the process and that they were happy.”

Councillor Harrington says highways officers would run tests to establish whether removing traffic lights on the A49 is feasible.

“We would do the microsimulation and if that came back and said it looks like it would work here, we would then do a live trial where we would have a set period where we stick orange covers over the lights and see how it went.

“This would have lots of safety mechanisms in place.”